Hi George,

with respect I think your view is a bit strong when considering that you took the HD621 out of your system as it didn't add any sonic benefits to your 44.1 playback (IIRC). I disagree that lack of f/w updates to 8k's impacts their value to any great degree.

We've debated and I think reached consensus on the idea that passing upsampled signals to DSP's seems better than upsampling in the DSP's themselves.

I would think there was way more bang for buck in HQ getting apodizing implemented into the legacy SSP's so that the 'benefit' could be enjoyed in all DSP's regardless of heritage.

FWIW - I tried to hear a difference in my 7200HC when being fed both HS=N and HS=Y materials. Albeit difficult to isolate from the L/R I could perceive absolutely no difference when the 7200 apodized its input.

So, I would just not bang on about DSP f/w. Other bigger fish to catch.

Rgds,
Nick