Ok, the package did end up being my Super SD System 3 and I've been toying with it this evening.
I'm going to give a 'quick' review with my findings starting with the summary.
Summary: From my small testing and playtime tonight I'd say most people will probably be happy with the Super SD System 3 (SSDS3). However, if you are an audiophile or videophile you might run into some annoyances.
Test setup:
1.) PC-Engine Duo-R with mickcris RGB amp (for comparison)
2.) Core Grafx (recapped, region modded)
3.) US Turbo Grafx 16 (stock, no repairs or mods)
4.) Genesis model 1 power supply
5.) Random modern switching (3 amp) power supply that runs all my other retro consoles without issue
6.) Packapunch Genesis 2 csync SCART cable
7.) Genesis 2 to RGB break-out box (RCA connectors). Uses csync, gives me flawless video on my Genesis 2 (that's been modded some to get rid of jailbars).
8.) Open Source Scan Converter (OSSC)
9.) Random $100 Vizio sound bar for sound
Sound: I'll start with sound since it'll be a shorter section. The CD audio isn't as good as it is playing from the disc on my Duo-R. Now I'm not an audiophile, so it's not like I have some super expensive sound setup and can tell if something is 1% off. From my very limited testing time the only thing I've noticed so far is the intro for the US version of Ys: Book 1 & 2 when you first boot it up. There's a lot of bass at the beginning, and then when the narrator starts talking he has kind of a deep voice that hits the bass too. On my Duo-R everything sounds clear and normal. On the SSDS3 in that scene it sounds like the bass is overdriven. This kinda distorts and muddies it, sorta like you're trying to go higher than your speakers can handle (except I didn't really have the volume cranked up). I don't really consider it subtle difference. I also ripped my original disc myself with TurboRip and also played back the .wav file on my PC to make sure it wasn't being distorted in the ripping process.
Video: Ok, I did 99% of this testing on with my OSSC on a 55" 4K TV. If you feed a good clean RGB signal to it from pretty much any retro console it looks phenomenal. Now I'm seeing some moving diagonal line interference similar to pictures and videos I saw of the initial release of the SSDS3, but not nearly as prominent.
Now by default the OSSC has a low pass filter (LPF) on for incoming video signals. I generally never turn it off except when I'm messing around or want to see how clean a RGB signal is. When I turn it off on my consoles with 'perfect' RGB it'll let a little bit of interference show up, but it's minor.
Now I tried to take some pictures with my phone that didn't exactly come out the best, but here they are:
https://imgur.com/a/j6Ul1
Since it's not always clear I'll kinda walk through the tests too.
1.) Tested with a hucard on my Duo-R. The darker green in the Dungeon Explorer title logo seems to be the most prominent place for potential interference. Things look crystal clear on the Duo with the OSSC's LPF on (the default setting). With the LPF off I see typical minor noise in the signal
2.) Tested with a hucard with SSDS3. It's not as clean as my Duo-R but not too bad. Turning off the LPF shows more noise than the Duo-R, but nothing stupid crazy.
3.) Tested the same game with the SSDS3 but loaded from the microSD card. Now I was seeing the moving diagonal lines in the green. Again, not as bad as the initial release of the SSDS3, but enough to be an annoyance if you're a videophile.
Now, turning off the LPF makes it look god awful. there's a bunch of static snow looking noise that I've never seen before on any other system with the LPF off.
Conclusion: I got the same results no matter what power cable I used or what video cable I used. It also didn't really change between me using a Core Grafx or a US TurboGrafx 16.
I'm not saying these are the definitive results and I'd be happy to give further info or help troubleshoot. However, given the various different scenarios I've tried it, I don't really think it's some fluke of me just having a potentially bad cable. I probably won't have time to REALLY dig into it hard until the weekend.
I'm reserving any judgement until other technical people get to really dig into this, as well as TerraOnion potentially getting to look into it as well (maybe the CD sound/bass issue could be fixed in a firmware patch?).
EDIT: if this needs to be spun off to a separate thread and/or the tech support forum, let me know.
