December 2009 PS Newsletter

• A special moment
• Analog CD’s?
• PerfectWave Review
• A $35 NAS?
• Connecting our customers with the future
• Soloist blemish sale
• New software update for PWT
• 2010

Welcome to the last PS Newsletter for 2009.  Yup, it’s December again, winter’s here and we’re getting ready for CES.

In this issue we write about some pretty cool subjects, including an interesting notion on the part of reviewers Marja and Henk of 6 Moons that CD’s aren’t actually digital as well as give you a link to their review of the PerfectWave DAC and transport.

We let you know about the Power Plant receiving the power conditioner of the year, we’ll share with you a DIY project to build your own NAS for $35 and then we’ll go into what’s happening at this January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and give you a sneak peek at what we have going on, plus there are a few blemished Soloist in-wall power conditioners we’re letting go cheap!

Our first story is one that I get a little misty eyed about when I think about it, so grab your hanky.

A special moment
Pretty much everywhere around the world, at (or near) winter’s solstice, most cultures have something going on that’s a pretty big deal: Chanukah, Christmas and Chinese New Year are a few of the examples.

One thing’s for sure: there’s lots of emotions as we wrap up one year and head into the new one.  With all that’s going on with the economies of the world we know that a lot of our neighbors are struggling and some are not able to have any sort of Christmas celebration for their kids and family.

My wife Terri decided that this year was especially important to do something about that situation.  She contacted a couple of agencies and found one that was working with local Boulder families who weren’t able to provide a Christmas for their kids and were asking for help.  Terri, who has a heart of gold, decided we’d tackle this problem and set out to provide a real Christmas for three local families.  We decided to combine our annual company Christmas party and gift giving into one fun event that every member of our team could participate in.

So, last week, we divided the entire company into seven teams, handed them a wad of cash and a list of needs each family had - turned off the phones (sorry about that) and dashed out the door to see who could make the most out of the family’s requests.  What a hoot!  PS’ers were buzzing through Target, Best Buy and wherever they could to score the best presents ever.

We all met back at PS headquarters and voted on which team did the best job.  The winners received a free “get out of jail” card for their efforts (otherwise known as a day off).  We wrapped all the presents, ate pizza, drank cider and really felt good about giving this season.

Our general manager, Jim Laib, reminded all of us how important it is to give of your time and resources this season - wherever and whenever you can.  It really felt great!

From everyone at PS, may you also have a great holiday season and if you can, give back a little this year.

Analog CD’s
Before we jump into this, I just wanted to blow our horn for a half second.  Last week we were honored to receive the Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity’s Best Of 2009 award for the Power Plant Premier.  They found that after all the reviews, after all the listening and evaluating every reviewer on their staff went through, that the Power Plant Premier was the best power conditioning product of the year.  Wow.  Thanks.

...and one last horn blow before we get moving.  Our new AC series of power cables have been getting rave reviews from customers (customer reviews count more than anyone’s in my book). John Panagulias wrote me:

“Well, after several months, I finally made the jump and investment. A brand new AC-12 power cable arrived at my door on Friday evening.

WOW. Talk about breathing new life into my system.  It’s as if a few (dozen) veils have been removed from my system. The sound has taken another step or two - giant - steps forward.  Really, I’m very impressed and very happy. My toes are-a-tapping.

What a great feeling to know that for a reasonable investment in one power cable, your whole system can sound younger and fresher by years.

I can’t wait until the AC-12 is fully broken in. Great stuff.  If anyone is in a similar position to me and on the fence, then all I can say is: if you’ve got the funds, then the rest is easy.”

Thanks, and on to our story - which coincidently is about reviewing!

Analog CD’s?  Say what?  There’s no doubt that over twenty years ago the introduction of the CD ushered us into the digital audio era.  Right?  Well, mostly yes and ..... no.  Here’s an interesting question: is the actual CD optical disc analog or digital?  Let’s do a little recap first and then jump into it.

There’s no doubt that every form of recorded music is a conversion process. Sound is converted from acoustical energy to mechanical or electrical energy and then stored on some type of medium for future retrieval.  The storage medium is portable so once converted, the audio can move from place to place and be shared (the RIAA, Apple and Sony not withstanding).

The very first storage methods, phonographs, were mechanical.  Audio (Sound pressure changes) moved a metal diaphragm (with a needle attached to it) back and forth across a rotating cylinder of wax - which in turn cut grooves into the wax.  When you reversed the process, the grooves in the rotating wax cylinder wiggled the same needle and the metal diaphragm moved back and forth to pressurize the air and voila!  Music.

Later we converted these sound pressure changes into electrical energy through converters called microphones and then stored the electrical energy as magnetic changes on a strip of tape; hence the name “tape recorder”.  When the process is reversed, the magnetic tape is moved past a small coil of wire which generates electrical energy and we hear sound (get our free DVD “From Coal to Coltrane” if you’re interested in how this works).

The next big conversion process took electrical energy and created a numeric representation of the electrical energy - and then the reverse of that process made music.  We call this digital audio.  Interestingly enough, digital audio is really not much different than any of the other ideas where sound pressure changes are converted into another form of energy and a physical record of those changes is created that can then be stored in a portable medium and available to reverse the process whenever you want.

A CD or DVD is an optical storage medium for digital audio.  One would think that this storage medium is digital in nature: storing the 1’s and 0’s in some digital form.  Reviewers Marja Vanderloo and Henk Longbeard would beg to differ.  In fact, they argue, CD’s are actually an analog storage medium.

“The pits on a CD are arrayed in a long spiral sequence resembling an LP’s groove.  While reading a CD, a raging stream of pits of variable lengths whirs past the laser reader whose response ... registering the reflections from the CD are completely analog in nature. Each time a pit transitions to a land or vice versa, it gets interpreted as a digital 1.

The upshot simply is utter confidence that calling the audio CD a mostly analog medium is correct. “

Pretty interesting viewpoint actually and I just love looking at technology in a different way.  Every time I do this it helps me see deeper into the heart of a given technology and opens my eyes to new possibilities.

If you’d like to read more, this info is the first part of a review of the PerfectWave DAC and Transport (PWD and PWT).  Henk and Marja cover these two wildly successful breakthrough products and give their opinion on what they like and don’t like.  It’s a great and informative review, which you can read here: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/psaudio7/perfectwave.html

A DIY $35 NAS?
Let me first start this article out with a bit of explanation about what a NAS is, why you need it, where it fits into a connected audio system and a reminder that DIY means Do It Yourself.  I think this may be interesting to folks who are a little computer savvy and like building projects on the cheap; not so interesting to those who want plug and play solutions.

A NAS is simply an external hard drive that connects to the network.  There are many off-the-shelf NAS devices on the market, pretty much all of them targeted to the computer geeks.  There aren’t many dedicated to music only, which is why PS Audio engineers are working hard on providing a PS music NAS that is a complete integrated system including copying of your CD’s, organizing your files and all at the touch of a button.  We’ll call it the PerfectWave Library.

Every connected audio music system has four components necessary: a player, a sender (server), a controller and a source of media (library).  A media NAS provides two of the four necessary components: the sender (server) and the media source (library).  Media on a NAS is stored on the hard drive and if it’s a media NAS there’s built-in software that sends out the music when a controller instructs it to do so.  Simple.

The PS Audio NAS will be a state-of-the-art affair providing the best CD copying method, mirrored hard drives for safety (so you don’t lose any data), plug and play ease, no fans etc., etc.  This is going to be perfect for many of our customers but all this sophistication and ease of use has to come at a price.  For those of you itching to get moving right now and don’t mind fooling around with computer stuff, here’s a really low cost solution.

Wireless manufacturer Netgear created a new class of UPnP compatible wireless router nearly 5 years ago that I am just now learning about.  They are called a Wireless Media Router and they have a media server, a wireless router and a USB port all built into one small box.  The older model, the Netgear WGT634U can be found on Amazon for about $35.  The newer, slicker model is a current product available from Amazon for about $150 and it is called the Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700.  It’s the same thing, but faster and greater range.

So how does this thing work?  It’s actually awesome.  If you have your library stored on an external USB hard drive all you need to do is plug that drive into the router and access it with a UPnP controller and you’re streaming music within minutes.

I won’t dwell on this for too long because I know many of our readers are not interested in DIY projects.  Let me just answer one quick question: what is a UPnP controller?  UPnP is Universal Plug and Play and it just means that anything sporting this format plays nice together.  You can do a Google search for these controllers (and there are a few) but the one I’ll tell you about is near and dear to my heart.  It’s the PS Audio controller.

As many readers of this newsletter remember, we announced sometime back that we were working hard on an iPod Touch app to control the PerfectWave Bridge.  OK, it is a UPnP controller and if you have this Netgear router, our controller will recognize it and control it.  Yes, it’s that simple.  Want to learn more about this?  Read this next article on what’s new at CES.

Connecting our customers with the future
I suppose that was a perfect segue to the story of what we’re showing at CES.  Let me first tell you what our theme is and then I’ll give you a sneak peek at what we’re displaying in Vegas.

Our theme for 2010 is “Connecting high-end audio with the future”.  Or, put another way, connecting our customers with the future of high-end audio.  Any way you spin it, the company is going full steam ahead to bring high-end performance values to connected home audio - and the 2010 CES will kick things off.

As you can imagine, it’s going to be quite exciting.  On display and in use will be:

• The PS Audio iPhone control software
• The PerfectWave Library
• The PerfectWave DAC with the Bridge built in
• The PerfectWave power amplifier

We’ll be demonstrating the system on a pair of Magneplanar 3.6’s, sounding terrific using Grant Vandermye’s Mye Sounds stands https://myesound.com/Home_Page.html, a pair of Martin Logan servo subs, RPG diffusors behind the Maggies and ASC tube traps on the sides and corners, powered by a prototype of the new PerfectWave power amplifier in a big, beautiful seven inch tall PerfectWave chassis.

The amplifier will be fed directly from the PerfectWave DAC and transport and inside the PerfectWave DAC will be the much talked about Bridge Media Player.  The Bridge will be fed from the PerfectWave Library (we wrote about earlier) and the whole affair powered with a couple of Power Plant Premiers.

The iPhone controller will operate the entire system, including the PWT and PWD and PerfectWave Library.

I’ve had this system playing in the sound room here at PS and it’s really something to behold.  I am sure we can’t duplicate how good it sounds here but we should be able to get fairly close.

I’ll try and take some pictures from the room.  Right now we have engineers scurrying all over the country (and in some cases the world) trying to get everything put together and ready for this big event.  We’re pretty darned excited!

The future of high-end audio, in all its glory, will be available and on display in our room at the Venetian hotel in Las Vegas, starting Thursday January 7th.

Soloist blemish sale
Would you be interested in saving a bundle?  Our production folks came into my office at the last moment and told me there’s a handful of blemished Soloists - both standard Soloist and Premier Soloist that they’ve messed up in production.  They work perfectly; have a full three-year warranty, but all have marks or scuffs on their faceplates.  We can offer the Soloist and Soloist Special Edition blemished units for $139 and $179 respectively.  This is a significant savings on one of the very best in-wall power conditioners on the market.

The scuffing and marks aren’t terrible and besides, they sit on the wall not to visible in most people’s homes.  They won’t last long and if you’re interested, give us a call at PS.

New software update for the PWT
As promised last month, we have a new software upgrade for the PWT, which will be followed by another in the first quarter of 2010.  This one that’s available right now improves the connectivity to the PS GlobalNet server for song titles and album art and fixes the track numbering problem some of you have reported.

If you are a registered PWT owner, we’ll contact you via email with instructions of how to download the free software upgrade and get up to date.

2010
I just finished reading Stereophile’s letters to the editor in their latest issue and one poor reader agreed with Mike Fremer who complained that connecting to computers for audio and media is way to complicated and painful.  We agree.

2010 is going to be one of the most exciting years in PS Audio’s history.  2010 is the year we launch our major assault on connecting high-end audio with the future - and we believe the future is easy access to no compromise audio from your library (which someday will also include your vinyl).

Our mission will be to bring you all the benefits and contents of your library, without computers, without hassle, without brain damage (or even major wallet damage) and bring the fun, the joy and the renewed sense of wonder and excitement back to your system.

There’s no question we can and will give this to you and the world.  Stay tuned.  2010 will be a landmark year.  Trust me.

Paul McGowan

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