I Hope you didn’t go overboard with partying on New Years eve (I was in bed by 10!).

If you’re in Asia celebrating Chinese New Year be careful because while we get only one night to party, you get a couple of weeks!

I am getting ready to [...]]]> Welcome to the first newsletter for 2012.

I Hope you didn’t go overboard with partying on New Years eve (I was in bed by 10!).

If you’re in Asia celebrating Chinese New Year be careful because while we get only one night to party, you get a couple of weeks!

I am getting ready to hop on a plane tomorrow for the European version of the Consumer Electronics show this weekend in Amsterdam.  If you’re attending the show come say hello and if not I’ll try and bring back some info if I see anything new and cool.Following the show we’ll be traveling a bit and spending time at a few of our dealers in the Netherlands including Multifoon Hi Fi on the 29th.  There we will be showing the prototype of the upcoming Silent Server and bringing along a 5000 losless album library to play with.

We’ll have time to chat about AC power products and streaming audio to your heart’s content.  I have always enjoyed my visits to the Netherlands – so into music and high-end are the people of that country – it’s a real joy and I look forward to meeting you all.

Kits shipping as planned

The PWD Mark II kits have been a smashing success and we are now shipping only Mark II PWD’s to customers purchasing the unit new and upgrade kits to those of you who already own the DAC.

When we announced the kits would be available we promised to ship out the first 300 in January/December if possible.  Half went in December to domestic customers, the second half will go out as promised by the end of this month (a couple going with me in my suitcase for Multifoon customers).  The majority of those kits shipping out next week will be international orders.

We are still on schedule to ship the next 300 kits out in February as promised.

The feedback has been uplifting and gratifying as people are amazed.  In fact, just this afternoon Cris posted:

“Paul, you and your team have a real winner with this MKII.  I just love it.  I never thought the DAC could get better than it was, but boy it did improve with this new board. Money well spent!”

One area I wasn’t so sure about has turned out to be a success – the ease of the installation.  With but few exceptions, the installs have gone far better than we could have ever anticipated – most taking less than 30 minutes and users reporting “it was a breeze”.  Thanks to the engineering and sales teams for putting together an easy to read and follow manual and video.

If you haven’t ordered your PWD upgrade kit you simply don’t yet know what you’re missing.  We still have some slots open for March if you’re interested.  You can order through your dealer or distributor as well.

Tagging albums

For those of you that read Paul’s Daily posts or visit the PS Audio Community forums this next piece will probably be familiar to you – but for those that just read the newsletter perhaps this will be interesting as well.

One of my goals is to build a great music library that our sales and engineering people can take with them in the field to demonstrate the PerfectWave Bridge and DAC system on the iPad.  What we’ve learned in demonstrating the product is pretty simple: the most effective way to show off the system is to simply hand the iPad over to a customer and tell them to “have at it” and play whatever they want.

Sounds simple enough, eh?  Well, one thing I can tell you is that certainly it’s simple if you’ve tagged your library properly.  Imagine handing over the iPad and having someone go to “B” for Beethoven and not find anything.  “No Beethoven?”

“Sure, but he’s listed under ‘L’ for Ludwig”.  Goofy and unintuitive, right?  But if you follow convention that’s what you can get.

“OK, I think I understand, so I should go to “M” to search for Mac when I want to play Fleetwood Mac?”

“No, no, no.  You go to the “F” for Fleetwood.  You go to ‘P’ for Paul McCartney unless Paul wrote the piece you’re looking for and then you go to “M”.

Eek!

Here’s what I am learning over time – first the obvious.  The quality of any music library is directly related to the ease by which you can find an album to play.  I have observed multitudes of people using our eLyric app to find and play their music and spent hundreds upon hundreds of hours fine tuning the process and the library to be intuitive.  Honestly I have a long way to go.

Second, when it comes to popular music there are a couple of really nice solutions out there for tagging, but classical music not so much.  Tagging classical music is a real challenge and as of late I have been focusing a lot of my time figuring out rules and standards by which folks might have a good experience sorting music.  I have seen everything from listing the composers as artists (sorry, most of the composers are no longer with us) to W.A Mozart, Mozart, Wolfgang A. Mozart etc.  It can really be a tangled web.

More on this subject later or stay tuned in through our community resources if you’re interested because we’re working on how to make this simple and easy to implement so our customers can have as much fun as we are.

Our Community forums have been lighting up like nobody’s business as of late – what with the Mark II upgrade questions and comments going hot and heavy.  If you want to get into some serious high-end subjects I would recommend spending some time reading, it’s a fun group of people.

PS Tracks, our magazine of the high-end and music has also gotten some fresh new articles to read so if you want, please take a moment to enjoy.

Lastly, Paul’s Daily posts have really been firing up both people’s imaginations as well as hot buttons with recent discussions on hot topics like music sharing and the fate of the high-end industry.

Till February

I’ll try not to drink too much beer in Europe and visit with as many of you as I can.  It’s fun going to visit our customers, friends and high-end community and I hope I have a chance to see some of you.

I’ll report back in February.  In the meantime, happy new year!

Paul McGowan

Greatest Drummer? Gene Kruppa: Our jazz column delves into the life and the music of legendary drummer Gene Kruppa. Read the story.

Occupied? No protest music? From the controversial department an article on why music hasn’t followed protests. Read the  story.

Franz and Ludwig? Beethoven and Schubert: Beethoven and Schubert compared to Jobs and Wozniak of Apple? Geniuses all. Read the story.

New music The independents: It’s always fun to get new music and here’s some great suggestions from the independents. Read the article

Paul’s Posts As always a lot of new thoughts: January’s posts have been particularly hot topics concerning the state of music sharing and hi fi retailing.  Give it a try

Welcome to the last newsletter of the year.

In this issue we remind you there are only a couple of days left to order the Mark II upgrade at the cheap price, let you know the status of the upgrade, give you some feedback from the first installation, share some cool stuff going on in [...]]]>

Welcome to the last newsletter of the year.

In this issue we remind you there are only a couple of days left to order the Mark II upgrade at the cheap price, let you know the status of the upgrade, give you some feedback from the first installation, share some cool stuff going on in the web forums and, of course, PS Tracks has some great new articles for you to enjoy.

Christmas is just about here

I wanted to get this newsletter out to all our readers before Christmas for two reasons: we have some important news below and I figured you didn’t want to be reading this over the holidays – and well – I didn’t want to be writing it over the holidays. 

At PS we buy Christmas presents for 4 families in need each year and this year was no different.  Through a local organization we were given lists of Christmas wishes from the four families and the company chips in the funds and our employees and families head out for a shopping spree.  It’s really fun and rewarding for everyone involved and gets us in the mood for Christmas.  Jim Laib, our illustrious GM, went straight to the manager of our local Target department store and twisted his arm to give the PS shoppers a hefty discount.  Thanks Target!

The Daily Camera newspaper ran an article on the activity which you can read here:http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-county-news/ci_19512911

We hope you and your family enjoy the holiday spirit wherever you live and we wish you all the best as well as a happy new year (both calendar and lunar).

There’s only a couple of days left

I wanted to mention early on in the newsletter that you have only a couple of days left to order a MKII upgrade for your PerfectWave DAC at the early adopter pricing of $795 including shipping.  December 31 is the last day to take advantage of this offer and save $200.

You can order directly from us by going here, or you can work through your local dealer if you’d prefer.  We are taking orders from all corners of the earth and the kits will be delivered to you via FEDEX, if you order directly through us, wherever you live.

December and January shipping allocations are sold out and the remaining kits will be shipped in February or March depending on how many more of you sign up.  Best you can do right now is February but those allocations are going fast.

On January 1, 2012, the price goes up to its normal $995 level.  

Now, I know there are a number of you that would prefer to wait until after the 1st and order directly from your dealer and have him handle the install for you.  At the $995 price many of our dealers and distributors would be happy to do this installation process for you as part of the price.  Please check with them before making a decision based on this, but we encourage you to consider upgrading as this is one BIG improvement to an already wonderful product.

If you do decide to save the $200 and get the early adopter pricing – but are worried you may not be able to handle the installation yourself, I recommend you watch the videos that we have posted.  You’ll see the process is straightforward and relatively easily.

If you’re uncomfortable at all, then certainly wait until after the first of the year and have your dealer, technician or distributor handle the install process for the extra few bucks.

This first video is one all of you should watch.  It gets you through the PWD’s top removal and helps you figure out if you have the A or B version.  The second two videos simply completes the process depending on which version you have.  Here’s the link to the first video to watch.  http://youtu.be/542U4yTFzJQ

The second video will be the balance of the project – either A or B depending on which unit you have.  You can watch either one as the process is nearly identical.  The A video is by our own Mark lewis and the B video is our customer service manager, Alex Millet.

Lastly, the first beta tester for the upgrade kits, Gordon, posted his own video and frankly it’s better than ours – in that he starts out with a glass of wine and has plenty of good humor to it. http://youtu.be/gIjn3UNlc68

First reactions to the upgraded PWD

Thanks to our very helpful forum member Gordon of Montreal (watch him in his online video) we have the first reaction from an unbiased listener.

Gordon has a really nice and highly resolving system.  He describes it here:

“For the test I am running the PWD direct to the amp using: 

• Wire World “silver” balanced XLR cables
• Jeff Rowland MC6 amp running in high current mode
• Wilson Audio Watt/Puppy 3/2 updated with Puppy7 lower drivers
• Cables are all Shunyata Anaconda, King Cobra on Mac and PWD via Hydra6 to Hubble outlets, fed by a dedicated 20a separate circuit to the panel.
• Grand Prix Audio rack system various resonance goodies from Walkwe, Stillpoints, gummy bears etc that have made it into my house over the years. I swap them in and out just for fun sometimes when I’m bored.”

You should know that Gordon thought the Mark I PWD sounded terrific and didn’t have a lot of room for improvement.  Here’s where he was coming from:

“Since I got the PWD my Meitner, Berkley and Wavelength DACS were sold and my Theta David transport became a flower pot”. 

Here’s what he commented on the Mark II upgrade with less than a day of burn in.

“This is the biggest jump in enjoyment with my system since I first got my PWD.  Bigger than my HFT fuses, bigger than my last cable change and well, just bigger everything.

Conservative? OK. Maybe I did tell Paul that it blew the roof off my house but I thought that might be a bit strong for an initial post.  But yes, it certainly surpassed my expectations.

You gonna like it!”

I won’t print everything he said but I would encourage you to head over to the PS Community forums and click on the thread First Impressions.  So far, 5,000 people have already read the page, why be left out?

Want to read more?

There’s plenty of information on the PWD Mark II (now shipping) and the PWD Mark II upgrade for those of you who have already purchased or are thinking of purchasing a Mark I.  I would recommend startinghere.

There’s a lot going on in this new DAC and we’re quite proud of it.

Forum fun

If you haven’t recently visited our new Community Forums I would encourage you to head over.  We’ve made some changes in the forums themselves and revamped the entire Discussion area.  Plus, there’s some really interesting threads about sound quality, fuses, recordings, favorite demo materials and much more.

One of the fundamental changes we’ve made is the appointment (anointment?) of a group of Community Leaders.  These folks have proven themselves to be consistently helpful contributors on the forums – not always in agreement with us – but certainly always knowledgeable and willing to help.  I am really excited about engaging part of our community to help everyone that has a question about PS or just hi-fi in general.  Please give them your support.

There’s a lot of great banter and info going on over there and I would encourage you to read up and enjoy and – if you have the time – be sure and post your thoughts and questions as well.

PS Tracks

I am delighted to report to you all the great articles we’ve added to PS Tracks magazine this month, now an easy to reach part of the new PS Audio website.  Our Jazz column is a few days late but Keith will have it up right after Christmas.  Lots of people are reading and enjoying these monthly articles and commenting on my Daily Posts in ever larger numbers.

I must say it’s really encouraging to watch our community grow as we add content and provide a place for all of our friends to communicate, read and learn.

We’ll write again in January.  Meantime, have a great new year and Merry Christmas.

Choral music New choral music? What could be more appropriate this time of year then new Choral music?  Come share, listen and learn.  Read the story.

History of music/Hi-Fi A two part article: One of the most informative reads on PS Tracks yet, the history of music and hi-fi in this two part series.  A great read.  Read the  story.

Chasing the dragon Multichannel systems for audio: We all know about using a 5.1 system for home theater, but what about for audio?  Chasing the dragon explores multichannel audio.  Read the story.

Stereo? The opposite of multichannel: A reprint from the Wall Street Journal that takes the opposite approach to home theater – using stereo instead of multichannel.  Read the article

Paul’s Posts As always a lot of new thoughts: December’s posts have been stimulating a lot of feedback and interest.  They’re free and enjoyed by more than 1000 people just like you.  Give it a try

On a personal note, my wife Terri and I like to hike and every summer we try and climb at least one of the 53 14,000 foot [...]]]> Welcome to the July 2011 PS Audio Newsletter including updates on all the great new articles in our online magazine PS Tracks.  There’s lots to talk about.

Fourteeners

On a personal note, my wife Terri and I like to hike and every summer we try and climb at least one of the 53 14,000 foot peaks our beautiful state of Colorado boasts. This year we managed two, all in one day!   Now, that might sound impressive, but in a way it’s kind of cheating because the two peaks are right next to each other and, you start at 8,200 feet so impressive as it may sound, this is one of the “easier”  climbs.

Called Grays and Torres peaks, the hike took us 8 hours round trip and the views were absolutely breathtaking, filled with wildflowers,  babbling streams, rocky outcroppings and relatively easily trails.   Personally, I am terrified of rock climbing or anything having to do with heights, so whatever we climb has to be easy trail hiking for me to feel safe.

Great fun and what a beautiful reminder of how just how pretty our the state is.  We are very thankful to be healthy enough to climb and fortunate enough to enjoy our surroundings.  I hope you get a chance to enjoy the outside air this summer.  Winter comes around all too quickly.

We need a few beta testers

Our team of programmers have been working hard on the PerfectWave DAC and Bridge (TAS just honored us with a Golden Ear award for this combo in the August issue).   One of the challenges has been adding WIFI capabilities without an external Ethernet Bridge.  The work’s been completed and now it’s time to let a few of our customers have a go at it and see what the issues are in the field.

If you own a DAC and Bridge combo, email me directly with your DAC serial number and a note that you want to help us test and we’ll set you up.  We’re restricting the beta test to residents of the US because of shipping costs and the brain damage associated with overseas issues.  Sorry.

You have to have a wireless router available in the home.  We will supply everything else you need, free of charge.  We can use 50 of you.

For everyone else with a PWD/Bridge waiting on WIFI, as soon as the beta testing’s over we’ll announce how to add WIFI to yours.  It’ll be done through a small USB WIFI plugin that pops into the back of the Bridge.

Silent Server

For those of you following along in the PS Audio forums about what has been called the Magic Box, we have officially named it the PerfectWave Silent Server.

I’ll share with you that I was sorely tempted to keep the name Magic Box (the in house term we use) because it describes beautifully the whole concept of a small insignificant looking box that silently goes about the business of tying everything together in your network audio system.   It magically takes all the load off of your computer (if you’re using one to serve music), works with your NAS (if you have one), connects up all your music wherever it may be, works without any intervention on your part – like magic.  But in the end we decided on something that describes what it does instead.

For those of you not following along, the Silent Server will simply be another way to run our eLyric server software without the use of a computer.  eLyric server software, available free at http://www.elyric.com , is being upgraded to make gapless and transcoding to WAV a simple solution any Bridge owner can use.  We realize many of you (including me) don’t want a computer to run the server, so the new Silent Server will be able to handle these duties tucked away in some corner.

eLyric has already been upgraded to provide both a playlist and radio station editor/manager and the interface is also a lot cleaner. We have more work to do, but we hope to have a version of the server available that supports gapless and transcoding playback to the Bridge in the last quarter of this calendar year.  Stay tuned.

Paul’s Posts

I mentioned last newsletter that I went to Seattle to watch our friend Seth Godin speak about the new age of communication, the internet, social media,  etc.  It was inspiring to say the least.  In that talk Seth challenged us to jump into the fray and make a difference by creating personal content that matters and send it to our respective communities.

Towards that goal I am writing a short piece each day about our industry, the high-end, other manufacturers, PS Audio, reviewers, or just something I find interesting.  My goal is to spark an ongoing dialog in the high-end community.

If you’re curious, you can read it on PS Tracks or receive a copy via email.  It’s short and sweet.  By email, just click here to signup or go to our high-end magazine http://www.pstracks.com and you can signup using the Instant Update service which sends out a short email each time we publish a new article and you get a copy of it.

We believe very strongly in permission based communication; which simply means we only want to send something if someone wants to get it.  I have actually spent more time making it easy to unsubscribe than I have to subscribe.  If you don’t want it, I don’t want to send it to you.

Do me a favor.  Give it a try and if you like it, send me a note.  If not, thanks for giving it a try.

Click here to signup for Paul’s Posts

Need a couple of writers

Our online magazine, PS Tracks, that celebrates music and the high-end community, needs a couple of knowlegeable writers: one for Rock and one for Jazz.  These are volunteer positions so don’t get too excited, but what we are looking for is someone willing to write a column each month similar to the popular Classical Corner.

The success of Classical Corner is remarkable and for good reason.  The depth Laurence goes into about each composer (this month it’s Beethoven)  is something you simply find nowhere else.  With musical snippets to listen to, in depth analysis of what makes a particular composer’s work interesting, Classical Corner is developing quite a following of devoted readers and I get notes from people thanking us for helping them appreciate classical music.

Now we want to do the same thing for Rock and Jazz.  If you’re interested, email me directly and let me know what you might have to offer.  You don’t have to be a writer (we can help with this) but you do need a depth of knowledge about the subject.  It’s fun and you get to share with the high-end community.

Lastly, I have gotten notes from other manufacturer’s wondering if they could use PS Tracks to air some of their opinions.  Absolutely.  The magazine is in support of the high-end community, so email me if you have something interesting to say.

This month in PS Tracks

PS Tracks is jammed full of great articles and interesting commentary.  Here’s some of the highlights:

The story of cover art

We all take the artwork on albums and CD’s for granted: The passing of Alex Steinweiss may not have caught your attention, but it certainly did ours.  Steinweisss invented the idea of putting artwork on album covers and produced some of the best there ever was.  In fact,  he created over 2500 covers.  In this edition of PS Tracks we go into some depth of what we had before cover art and how Steinweiss made his great contribution.  Read the story.

How much is music worth?

Albums used to cost less than $5, CD’s $20: Lady Ga Ga’s latest album blitz sold over 1 million copies, but they were only $0.99 each.  It’s a new day.  Gilbert Heatherwick recalls the early days of buying albums, what hapened to that industry, how it changed so radically and what we’re likely to expect in the near future.  This story affects us all, if we’re into music and who isn’t?  Read the  story.

Building a sound room

Ever dreamed of this?: We’ve probably all lusted after the idea of starting from scratch and building the ultimate “man cave”  sound room that is state of the art.  Follow Bob Wood as he does just that.  We go step by step through the process with lots of pictures as well.  Read the story.

Turntables in the movies

Turntables are popping up: Ken Kessler is happy about all the turntables he’s been seeing lately at the movies, the last one viewed on an airplane.  The real meat of the story is a chance for the community to help support a great project.  Read the story.

Classical Corner Beethoven

There isn’t anyone that hasn’t heard of Beethoven: but what do you really know about his music and the secrets that makes his music so distinctive?  Lawrence Schenbeck takes us on a musical journey with examples and great writing.  Read the story

At the beginning of the month we launched the new PSTracks website and enjoyed a flood of nice comments, offers [...]]]> Have you ever had a month where it was so good, so inspiring, so eye opening that you’d do it all over again just because it would feel good?   June’s been like that for me.

At the beginning of the month we launched the new PSTracks website and enjoyed a flood of nice comments, offers from people to write and a huge amount of support from the high-end community.  Right after the launch Terri and I moved to a new place in Boulder we’re excited about,  we launched a new version of eLyric, the company had a great month and we’re leaving tomorrow to drive all the way to Kansas for a “redneck 4th of July” with ATV’s, beer and fireworks.  It doesn’t get any better than that!  Oh, wait a minute, it actually does.  Here’s the rest of June’s story:

Near the end of June I got a wonderful Father’s day present from my son Lon;  a trip to Seattle to watch our friend, high-end enthusiast and world renown speaker Seth Godin at the Act Theater.  It was a life changing event and I am still breathless from the experience.  Seth is just one of those guys who presents an all encompassing world view of our society and connected culture with such crispness and clarity as to be jaw dropping.  And Seth is one of us!  Seth is an Audiophile, loves music and gets the connected world better than almost anyone I know.  If you’re interested in finding out more, go to his website and sign up for his daily blog.   It’s short, sweet and almost always challenging.  www.sethgodin.com

Quick PS update
As mentioned, there’s a new version of eLyric available for free download that’s just been published.  Plus, an even newer version will be available in a couple of weeks that will add a playlist and radio station builder.  If you’re enjoying eLyric as a music manager, it just got a lot better.

Probably the biggest issue on most of our customer’s minds is the question of product delivery.  I can tell you that our output this month is 25% greater than last month and July should show a similar increase in output.

P5’s, P10’s, PWD’s, PWT’s and Bridges have been streaming out the door each week in an impressive flow.  Why is the ramp up seemingly so slow?   Well, as I’ve explained in many a forum post on our website www.psaudio.com making the switch from ordering products out of China to hand-building in Boulder is a major turn of events.

Think of how this worked.  When we first launched the Power Plant Premier, demand was through the roof (as it is now with the P5 and P10).  All we needed to do was place a purchase order and 90 days later,  a 40 foot container full of PPP’s would show up and be sent out all over the world.  Now it’s different.  Because we’re committed to building everything in Boulder,  it takes hundreds of purchase orders to many vendors to bring in all the parts and then begin assembling the products.  It takes far more assemblers, technicians and engineers than we’ve ever had on staff to make sure everything is done properly.   Simple fact: we cannot just ramp up from zero to full steam ahead in less than 4 months while maintaining our ongoing business.

Lastly, I’ve been so happy with the level of craftsmanship, the pride our people feel at building these gorgeous products right here in beautiful Boulder that I am looking at every single product we make and asking myself why not build everything here?  Really.

PSTracks
Why do we need reviews of equipment?  Are they really necessary?  Are they “old school”?  I tend to get a little bored reading equipment reviews because they all seem somewhat the same but then I realized they are important and why: they are a filter.  There’s so much noise these days, with everyone telling you to buy this or that, that we really need trusted reviewers to help us filter through the noise.  Interestingly enough our new online magazine PSTracks doesn’t have reviews of equipment and takes a whole different approach to cutting through the noise.  We don’t create the noise in the first place.  What we strive to create is great content worth reading – new, fresh content that’s worth your time, presented only to those of you intrerested in reading it.

PSTracks is all about connecting the high-end community together through music,  think pieces on technology, controversy and promoting new voices that can’t wait to be heard.  This is refreshing content that I don’t think is available anywhere else.

Perhaps most exciting to me personally is Lawrence Schenbeck’s new series on PSTracks, Classical Corner.   Classical Corner came from a conversation Lawrence and I had a while back as we reminisced about an old radio program we both loved called Adventures In Good Music by the late Karl Haas.  Adventures has the distinction of being the single most popular classical music radio program  of all time.  The program talked about classical music, explained it and played it in a way that turned millions of people (including me) into classical music lovers.  Haas wasn’t a DJ but he was a trained pianist and musicologist and knew music better than just about anyone.  He  took an hour a day to delve into what made pieces of music wonderful and breathtaking; taking us on a musical adventure every day he broadcasted.  I miss these programs to this day.  The heir to this program is Bill McGlaughlin, who now presents his version calledExploring Music which airs on about 40 radio stations.  Bill’s work is good, but seems to miss some of the magic Haas had.  I have always wanted that back.

When I learned that Lawrence also loved the Haas program, has a PhD in musicology, gives talks to the audience of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is an Audiophile, and can inspire anyone to understand and appreciate what’s going on in a piece of music, I was convinced we could once again create the same sort of magic as Karl Haas did, years ago.   Here’s a sample of his writing on Stravinsky:

“I believe they were on to something profound. Insofar as visual artists, for example, went back to the impulses that drove the very first makers of art, they were also forcing themselves to “discover”  line, form, color, and texture all over again.  Imagine being one of those hominids who first traced the outline of a bull on a cave wall.  You’re asking yourself: in order to see a bull, what do my eyes need to see? Is it the shape of the bull’s back? Is it the thrust of his horns?  And finally you begin to paint. You’re not so much interested in literal representation. What you want is to feel the bull’s magical presence,  his rage and sweat and smell, his power. You create an abstraction that expresses something primal.”

This is good stuff and it’s rare to find in depth thoughtful writing like this today.  We chose PSTracks to launch this, instead of a radio format, because radio is close enough to being dead as to be completely irrelevant in this day and age of connected media – plus our idea of the printed word interspersed with musical excerpts is a more timeless venue that can be emailed, shared, and archived.  PSTracks seems the perfect platform for a modern version of Adventures and helps fulfill a 35 year old dream of mine.  As you read Classical Corner, you are prompted to click on the short musical pieces on the website that Lawrence hand selects to demonstrate exactly what he’s talking about (just as Haas did).  Please take a moment and give Classical Corner a spin.

Lastly, before I list all the snips of new articles on PSTracks, I want to point out another article of note: Jason Serinus has written his heart out in a piece he’s been dying to publish for years.  An Audiophile’s intro to Wagner’s Ring.  I encouraged Jason to write it because of all the music in the world I WANT to love, Wagner’s Ring Cycle is top among them; problem is I can’t stand to listen to most of it.  Caterwauling as best I can tell.  

My good friend Arnie Nudell taught me to love opera, but never Wagner.  I am hopeful that after reading and playing some of the examples Jason provides, I’ll change my mind.

Featured on PSTracks this month:

Wagner’s Ring for Audiophiles

One of the greatest operatic spectacles ever: Richard Wagner’s thrilling four-opera Ring Cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs), has only increased its hold on the hearts and minds of opera lovers worldwide since its completion in 1874, but not everyone can appreciate the piece, so here’s a primer from reviewer Jason Victor Serinus.  Read the story

Classical Corner Series

A new and exciting redo of Adventures in Good Music: For those of you that remember the late Karl Haas and his wonderful radio program, Adventures in Good Music, here is a modern day version that inspires, informs and delights.  Musicoligist Lawrence Schenbeck treats us to the works of Mozart and in the second edition, Stravinsky.   Musical snippets included.  Read the story.

Ethernet vs. USB

Controversy streaming music: Computer engineer Larry Adams walks us through his experience with USB, how he wound up choosing Ethernet to connect his hard drive full of music to his DAC and what it all means.  Read the story.

Home networking

From our Bits and Bytes: Network guru Aaron Gutin walks us through the next in his series on home networking.  Like high-end gear, network equipment isn’t the same and here’s what you need to know to get it right.  And you thought a router was just a router, didn’t you?  Read the story

The Show Report

You’ve read show reports: Brad Paulson tells it like it is when it comes to shows (and he’s been to them all).  We’re sure this is a refreshing angle on a great high-end show that recently took place in California.  Read the story.

USB DACS all mouth

All mouth and no trousers: The first article by Australian reviewer John Darko starts out with this proclomation “Only buy a USB-only DAC if it offers a sound that’s not available from any other box,”.  USB DACS are fine, but are they what you think they are?  Find out.  Read the story

Getting your system going

Simple tweaks and upgrades: Audiophile Florent Duchateau walks us through a step-by-step system tweak.  There are similar articles on this subject but none quite as homespun and down to earth as what you will find in this new series.  Read the story

Vinyl baby, it’s vinyl

Van halen on vinyl?  Sure!: Vinyl expert Josh Bizar shares with us some of the best new vinyl releases out there.  From Van Halen, to Elvis Costello, Josh walks us through some great reviews and reminds us that vinyl ain’t going anywhere.  It’s here to enjoy for the long term.   Read the story

I gotta tell you that I have never been this excited about a PS Newsletter.  Never.  As some of you may know I have been “holed” up in my office from early morning to late at night for a month now working on a secret project.  [...]]]> The “last” PS Audio Newsletter

I gotta tell you that I have never been this excited about a PS Newsletter.  Never.  As some of you may know I have been “holed” up in my office from early morning to late at night for a month now working on a secret project.  This Newsletter unveils that  project (and the new PSTracks logo might give you a hint something’s changed as well).  Let me start from the beginning.

For the last ten years I have been writing the PS Audio Newsletter and faithfully delivering it each month.  It’s one of the tasks I really look forward to at the company.  The Newsletter is sent out to well over 20,000 subscribers who are interested in audio, music, the high-end and the company.  I have always tried to keep the Newsletter personal, fun, informative, a good read and aimed specifically at our core audience.  I have also tried to keep it less sales oriented and more informative.

But after ten years I think my Newsletters are getting stale.  I want to juice them up, give more, not less.  I asked myself “how about if we created something brand new that’s even more interesting, more fun, more informative and serves an even higher purpose than connecting only PS Audio customers together?”  I wondered if we could create something that has greater value and really speaks to everyone interested in the high-end.  I concluded we can do this and be more effective at the same time.  How?  By adding more voices than just mine and delivering the content through an online magazine format rather than an email.

Reinventing a 10 year old newsletter

To reinvent the PS Newsletter we would have to break a few molds and get outside of our comfort zones.  We would have to focus on stories, information and concepts that are sometimes unrelated to PS Audio .  This is a real 180 degree turn from a traditional newsletter approach which would have us force feeding what WE think you should read about US .  Instead, this new idea focuses US on presenting what we believe YOU would be interested in.  Sounds simple enough, but traditional it is not.

PSTracks

So it’s my great pleasure to introduce you to PSTracks , the online magazine of the high-end.  Our tagline is “Connecting the high-end together” and I think that pretty much sums up the magazine’s purpose (although it’s really a newspaper).

PSTracks will focus on fresh news items, music and present interesting articles and opinion pieces on relevant issues.

The frequency of delivery will no longer be once a month.  Instead, the articles, news stories and music reviews will be added as they become available, sometimes daily.  This newsletter will be sent once a month but it’s purpose (other than saying hello) will be to let you know what’s been published over the last 30 days.

What you will and won’t read

You will read stimulating opinion pieces, articles of music, connected media, vinyl, high-end, news, events, great stories and lots of interesting and provocative material from our team of writers.

You won’t read reviews of equipment specific to our industry.  Reviews of equipment we will write about might include routers, NAS drives, computers and even off-beat subjects that are of interest to our readers but are NOT about PS Audio or our friends and colleagues in the industry.

There are plenty of great voices handling equipment reviews and there’s no value in adding another, especially if its funded by a manufacturer.

The writers

Here’s where it gets really cool and uber exciting.  PSTracks has a great group of core writers to begin with and we hope to add more.  We will bring on the best of the best wherever it’s possible.  We will also include our readers as contributors.

The opening issue of PSTracks includes articles from Ken Kessler, Dan Schwartz, Josh Bizar, Cookie Marenco, Gilbert Heatherwick, Aaron Gutin, yours truly and the staff at PS Audio.  We’ve arranged for some guest writers from the music as well as the IT industry to start penning some original articles that’ll be well worth read.

PSTracks is free, funded 100% by PS Audio, accepts no advertising and is open to anyone who wants to contribute (other manufacturers are welcome) as long as we think what’s being published is of interest to the high-end community.

Below are the highlights of this first edition, but we aren’t including all that’s there.  Please enjoy and use the social media links we have provided to get the word out about PSTracks.  Connecting the high-end community together is our goal and we need your help to spread the word to those you think would enjoy this online newspaper.

How Wall Street destroyed the music industry

It wasn’t Napster that did in the music industry: Musician, reviewer and Audiophile Dan Schwartz delivers an insightful report on how Wall Street destroyed the music industry and how it happened.  You may be surprised to read what Dan has to say: his view is from the vantage point of someone who is right in the heart of the music industry.  Read the article.

The state of audio retailing

A no-holds barred report on a valuable resource: Reviewer Ken Kessler holds no punches back in this story on the state of audio retailers: and it’s not pretty.  It should be no surprise that our cherished brick and mortar high-end shops are getting fewer and fewer, impacting our ability to audition product; but why?  Is there anything we can do to stop it?  Ken writes what most are afraid to.  Read the article.

The last stereo I’ll ever own

Does this sound familiar?: From London England, high-end customer Jack Bolton shares with us what “the last system he’ll ever own” looks like.  Mr. Bolton wonders whether the upgrade itch will strike again as in the past.  Read the article .

Home networking

From our Bits and Bytes: Are all networks the same?  Aaron Gutin walks us through an overview of a home network, from the simplest to the most complex and why one make the choice between the two extremes.  It’s not technical and certainly interesting.  Read the article.

Serious music collecting

15,000 tracks later….: Gilbert Heatherwick explores the pain and joy of moving from serious vinyl and CD collector to building a digital library.  There’s a link to get your own HD download and save 50% in the process.  Read the article .

If it spins me right round like a record, baby

Reviews from a vinyl junkie: Vinyl junkie Josh Bizar of Music Direct covers reviews of new vinyl from Pink Floyd, Fleetwood MAC, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Charles Mingus and Robert Plant.  Josh also treats us to a look into the joy of vinyl. Read the article

Tales of the high-end

Two Paul stories: The first two stories in an ongoing series by Paul McGowan on the high-end; a look of what it’s like from inside.  The first two in the series covers our very first product and what it takes to design a high-end piece and our first trip to CES.  Read them both

Ham fisted upsampling

Getting something for nothing: It’s been said that upsampling is trying to get something for nothing.  In the controversy department, is simply upsampling a CD and pasting a high-rez label on it kosher?  What is upsampling, when is it good to use and what’s all the noise about?  Read the article

Welcome to the April 2011 PS Audio Newsletter.  In this edition we learn how I [...]]]>

Welcome to the April 2011 PS Audio Newsletter.  In this edition we learn how I almost stopped the news for a day, get some cuss words in praise of the new Power Plants, give you an update on deliveries of products in Europe, put out a call for our community to write some reviews and we’ll publish them for you, announce the new iPad app (check out the shot to the right here) and share some screenshots, give you an update on the Digital Lens and finally, share an amazing musical experience with you; one I am sure you have never heard.  Enjoy!

A day without news

Next month’s my birthday; I turn 63.   The funny thing about age is how we view ourselves.  When I was young I always pictured myself as older and more mature and now that I am older I picture myself as younger and less mature.  In both cases I was always a little surprised looking into the mirror because what I saw didn’t line up with the picture in my head; especially these days!  You?

For some reason I woke up this morning thinking about how much has changed since I was a teenager: a time without computers, internet, email, iPods and downloaded music.  A time when newspapers shaped our view of the world and TV was still in its infancy as a trusted source for our world view.  A time when I actually worked at a newspaper as a budding photographer and how I was responsible for a day without news in my home town.  It’s a funny story.

I grew up in Anaheim California, home of Disneyland, during a time when Orange County actually meant orange groves; they were everywhere and in the summer, we used to enjoy the sweet scent of orange blossoms in the air, sitting on the front lawn at 9PM watching the evening’s fireworks over Disneyland.

In the summer of my 15th year, I scored a job at the Anaheim Bulletin, the local newspaper.  I wanted the job of photographer, but had to settle on what they called “copy boy”.  I was the first to open the offices in the morning (at 4AM) and my job was to match all the news service teletype copy with the appropriate roll of punch tape.  The punch tape was used to automate the linotype machines that made the newspaper.

The editors would take whatever story they wanted “off the wire” and place that story where they wanted it; usually on the front or inside pages of the newspaper.  Punch tape was nothing more than a roll of paper tape with holes punched in a specific order to control the machines that created the lead type that received ink and then made the paper print.

Most of the Anaheim Bulletin came from the wire services (UPI and AP) and the inside pages of local news was handled by the reporters at the paper.  My job was critical to getting any kind of world or national news printed, because without the wire service news, there would be nothing of what’s happening around the world or, for that matter, even a city as close to us as Los Angeles.

From noon to 3PM, the wire services ran articles no one was interested in.  So as not to waste paper, my job was to disconnect the machines from the phone lines and let them sit idle.  At 3PM I reconnected them, hopped on my bicycle and went home.

One day I got involved with my first photo assignment as a junior photographer and totally spaced out reconnecting the teletypes.  The next morning I arrived, bright and early, and the room was completely empty.  Nothing, nada.  At first I thought “cool, nothing happened and there’s no news”!  The absurdity of that hit me soon enough and my heart sank as I saw the patch cable left out of its connected socket.  My heart started racing and I felt that awful feeling of fear in the pit of my stomach.

I quickly plugged it in, got the teletype machines chattering again but it was too late.  The news of the day wasn’t available any longer and I would have to fess up to my boss – who I was scared to death of.  He was the Editor in Chief, a man that looked and acted every bit like the cigar chomping Perry White in the Superman comics; at 6AM he walked in and headed straight for me.  I am not sure he even knew my name, but he made a beeline right for me.

Much to my surprise he didn’t bite my head off.  Because the Bulletin was an afternoon paper, he sent me outside to buy up every morning paper I could lay hands on (like the LA Times) and then cut out all the big stories, hand them to the reporters so they could basically rewrite this news and get it ready for the afternoon edition.  The paper was late for the first time in nearly 40 years, thanks to me, but it got out and without much in the way of national news.  I gotta say that was impressive footwork on the part of the editors.

I managed to keep my job that summer, get a few photo credits and learned a lesson in responsibility I will never forget; even as I get to 63.

OK, that’s my story and I am sticking to it.

H*ly f****ing s**t

Well, I make a point of never mixing politics or religion into the newsletter and always keeping it clean and above board because it’s about music and having a good time.  But sometimes something just makes you fall off the chair when you read it and this is one of them.

Alex Millet, one of our sales trainers and inside sales guy sent me a note from customer Richard Slotkin:

“H*ly f***ing s**t!

For the past hour or so I’ve been listening to a classical music FM station and I can’t believe the difference. This station doesn’t have especially good reception where I am and the stereo imaging is usually weak. Since I installed the PP5, the sound is an order of magnitude better. There’s actually stereo imaging and I’ve heard 4 different pieces so far, from Baroque to late Romantic.

And I still don’t have the good power cord!

Maybe they are just running some better quality recordings than usual. I’ll find out pretty soon. But, so far, this unit has made more of a difference than I really expected. Way more than the Quintessence did and it did make a difference when I installed it.”

Wow, just had to include this.  And, one more:

“I took delivery of my P5 today, it was love at first sight! If anybody is sitting on the fence about buying one of these, just do it! The GlobalNet configuration tool is awesome as well.”

So these evolutionary new Power Plants really are being accepted in amazing fashion and I won’t take up too much newsletter space sharing the comments we get, but hey, when they’re this good?    You just gotta.

Deliveries in Europe

Deliveries to countries in Europe have admittedly been slow.  I know that and we apologize.  I know there are a lot of frustrated people waiting for their new Power Plants and some have already traded in their older ones and now have nothing in the system.  Not happy campers for sure.

The last two weeks have seen pallets of Power Plants heading over to the UK and Europe and we sincerely apologize for the delays and the frustrations you’ve experienced.  This is supposed to be fun, not cause anxiety.

The problems have been supply chains for these products.  Now that we’re manufacturing locally we have to depend on an entirely new set of vendors for our PC boards, painting, metal work, and all the things that going into making this product.  It’s a huge shift for us and it’s going to take some time to ramp up.  But we’ll get there, I promise.

Hi Rez music reviewing

Have you visited the PS Audio forums lately?  There’s certainly lots of activity with the Bridge, DAC and new Power Plants to talk about, but one thing caught my eye immediately; a discussion about high-rez downloaded music. http://www.psaudio.com/ps/forum/viewthread/2053/

This particular thread is labeled “For Clapton fans” and has a lot of great suggestions for music.  In fact, if you search around on our forums you’ll find quite a lot about music and, in particular, high-rez music.

I bring this up because it sparked an idea.  I don’t really read much in the way of reviews of high-rez music in the mags, so how about if we do it ourselves?  What I am thinking is we leverage our community to write some reviews of high-resolution tracks, both good and bad, so that the growing number of us enjoying high-resolution audio can get a handle on what’s hot and what’s not.

High resolution audio is really in its infancy and the more suggestions about gems and duds available, the more we can help build a high-rez community around this knowledge.

So here’s the deal: this Newsletter goes out to a mailing list of around 30,000 Audiophiles the world over.  That’s a reasonable audience, probably on par with the magazines themselves.  If any of you reading this want to try your hand at reviewing high-resolution music (or anything that’s a gem and can be played on a DAC or a turntable), email it to me and I’ll publish the good ones in the Newsletter.  Why not?  I think this’d be fun and bring more great music into our lives.

Where we are with the Bridge and DAC

The PWD DAC and its companion Network Bridge, permit our customers to enjoy music   stored on their computers, their hard drives, even the internet.  It’s a wonderful piece of technology that is changing the world of high-end audio day-by-day.  But no new technology is without teething problems depending on where in its evolutionary life it is.

I promised an update of our progress solving some of the issues a few of our owners are experiencing with the DAC and Bridge.  The issues revolve mostly around 176kHz 24 bit (and above) music files.  At issue are occasional skips or dropouts.  The other issue we have is the lack of gapless play, where the Bridge won’t play a gapless piece of music without breaks (think Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon).

So, in an effort to keep you up to date with our progress on these issues, the high resolution FLAC and WAV issues have pretty much been fixed in all but the rarest of occasions (and by the time you read this, even those should be gone).  This is thanks in large part to the heroic efforts of our senior Linux programmer, Dennis Kerrisk.  So if you have experienced any dropouts or skipping problems with high resolution audio, it’s time to upgrade the software in your DAC and Bridge to fix this.  The process can all be handled right from the front panel touch screen.

If you need any help, always refer to our How To section on the website, it’ll walk you through the easy upgrade process.

Gapless is a different issue.  This one’s a bit trickier and we’ve assigned a team to tackle this one.  They’ve been working hard on it for a while now and I hope to report to you in the next month’s newsletter of our success.  Again, the good news is that whatever we do to add gapless as a feature we can be handled through a simple software update.

The new iPad app

Many of you have downloaded PS Audio’s free music server eLyric www.elyric.com as well as our controller, available on the Apple app store.  The app is currently only available for the smaller iPhone/iPod devices (although it’ll work on an iPad).

I am delighted to announce that we are now internally testing (and using) the PS Audio eLyric iPad app and let me tell you, it’s a real joy.  This app is so much nicer than anything I’ve played with, it really brings the fun back into the equation.

The app has a ways to go before we release it and I am hopeful we can release in late May but it’ll more likely be June for the big launch.

The eLyric iPad app will be included in the measly $10 we charge now for the iPhone app, and if you already own tagNplay (we’re changing the name over to eLyric) then you’ll be automatically eligible for the new iPad app when it launches.

This is really a big step for us and gives the user a whole new experience when streaming music to the PWD Bridge (or any UPnP compatible device).

Update on the Digital Lens

The long awaited release of the PerfectWave Digital Lens has both good news and bad news.  The good news is I am sitting here looking at it, playing with it and enjoying what it does for the system.  The bad news is I can’t share it or sell it yet.  Sigh.

The engineers are struggling with the new asynchronous USB 192kHz/24 bit input processor included on the Lens and how to get this “lensified”.  For me I could care less as (most of you know) I believe USB audio is already a dinosaur waiting for the end to come knocking.  Our network connected audio products already obviate the need for USB, but we gotta include it  because the idea behind the Lens is to take any digital input, from just about any source, rebuild it perfectly and then send it back out to any DAC ever made.  To do this we certainly don’t want to forget computer audio.

So, hopefully we’ll get the kinks worked out in USB and be able to put it into production soon.  It’ll be really cool when we do and I wish we could give you a firmer date than that but …… I cannot.

Music in the forest

Our mechanical engineer, Bill Abplanalp, sent me this link to a Youtube video called Touch Wood that I found just awesome and I had to share.  http://www.youtube.com/user/sakura4250?blend=2&ob=5

Imagine, a serene forest setting in Japan.  You hear the streams, the wind, the birds, and all of a sudden, the world’s largest musical instrument begins to play with no one at the helm and nothing powering the instrument other than gravity.  The work that must have gone into making this happen is nothing short of stunning.

Who has time like this?  I love watching and listening, but most of us have to work for a living.  I am envious of artists and musicians who have the time, smarts and skill to make something like this actually happen.

Thanks for sharing this with us Bill.

Till May

Well, when I write again next month I’ll be another year older.  Sigh.  I guess the bright side of me points out I am happy and healthy, as is my family, and frankly life’s pretty darned great right now.  I hope it is for you and yours as well.

See you in May’s newsletter and if you get a chance to write a music review, send it over to me.  Thanks.

Paul McGowan