January 2009 PS Newsletter

Happy New Year!
I think everyone reading this newsletter will agree that 2008 was a year we’ll all remember for a long time, whether we want to or not.  What a roller coaster ride it’s been.  I do have every confidence that 2009 will be a much brighter and prosperous year than what we just went through.  Call me the eternal optimist, but I really believe this.

As always, our western New Year is followed close behind by the Chinese new Year and that starts in Asia today.  This is the year of the Ox when the attitude will be to hunker down and work hard to get things back in order.  Sounds like a pretty good plan to me!

It’s a real turkey
Many of you long time readers of the PS newsletter know that Terri and I are pretty die hard vegetarians and have been so for many years.  So it seems nothing short of ironic that our home has been adopted by, of all things, a wild turkey that came to visit just after Thanksgiving.

Our house has been attacked by bears, visited by fox, ermine, porcupines, elk and the occasional cougar; but never a turkey.  Heck, I didn’t even know turkeys were part of the Rocky Mountain landscape.  Who knew?  This all started about a month ago when Terri yelled “McGowan, there’s a vulture in the backyard!”  A vulture?  Well, I have to cut her a little slack as both vultures and turkeys have these small out-of-proportion heads.

After deciding the “vulture” was, in fact, a female turkey and surmising that perhaps this creature escaped from one of our neighbors future dinner plates, we decided the best way to protect it is to start feeding it.  That may have been a mistake.

The turkey, affectionately named Mrs. Palin, in honor of Governor Palin’s famous interview in a turkey processing plant that horrified every vegetarian watching, has now taken up residence on our backyard railing looking directly into our windows.  If we don’t feed the bird, Mrs Palin gets quite annoying by pecking on our windows and driving us nuts.

I haven’t a clue what to expect here.  We only feed her on weekends but I believe this bird is here for the duration and it will probably fall upon me to clean up after her for the length of her stay.  Oy.  The McGowan boys would like to solve the problem with a turkey fryer but Mom and Dad won’t have any of it.  I’ll keep you informed of any progress.

Product registration
Our new website has garnered all kinds of compliments and lots of increased participation.  Many of you have written to let me know how much you enjoy the AV news articles, the Learning center and its advice and How To sections.  Thanks.  If you haven’t visited here is the link http://www.psaudio.com/ps/learn/

Along with all the good words about the new website there’s bound to be some bad.  Here it is (let me scrape some mud off my face first).  Our product registration section was not connected to the database that keeps all the information on your products.  So, hundreds of you registered your new products only to now learn that info vaporized.

I am so sorry.  As many of you know from reading the warranty, we provide a 90-day warranty as standard for our equipment throughout the world.  Once you register your product with us, we extend that warranty period to 3 years.  We do this to help with problems we’ve had over the years with unauthorized dealers, bogus warranty claims, as well as a means of encouraging people to register so we can send news of updates or problems.

Even If you buy a used PS product, registering it allows us to send you updates and info for that product when available.  We will soon be offering the chance for second owners to purchase a full warranty on many products as well.

So, the problem on the registration site is now fixed.  I would ask any of you that have registered a product in the last few months, as well as those that have registered in the last year, to go to the website and check to make sure your product has been registered.  

The new system will show you everything you have registered with us, how long the warranty time remaining is for that product, etc.  It’s a cool system but you want to make sure your product shows up properly so we can take care of your equipment for you.

Please accept my apologies.  To access the product registration form, simply go to http://www.psaudio.com/ps/register/ .  It takes only a few seconds and works from anywhere in the world.

Power Plant Premier gets three reviews
Three great new reviews have been published on our biggest selling product, the Power Plant Premier AC regenerator.  The first is a biggie, appearing in the February 2009 issue of Stereophile magazine and written by Robert Deutsch.  

“I was surprised by the magnitude of improvement produced by the Premier.  The music became more subtly detailed, the soundstage wider and deeper, the overall sound more natural, less electronic.”  Thanks Robert.

The Premier is one of those “must have” pieces of equipment.  I know there are other AC power solutions out there - all having some degree of benefit - but none as measurably significant as the Premier.  None that actually fix the real problems of the AC line such as regulating it and improving dynamics as the Premier does.

“There was no impairment of dynamics; if anything, it was now easier to hear the music’s ebb and flow.”  Exactly.  Only a Power Plant can add energy back into the system and this is something no filter can possibly hope to do.

The second review is on Jerry Del Colliano’s new online magazine Home Theater Review .

“There is no question that PS Audio’s Paul McGowan is the one man most responsible for making the idea of regenerated AC power popular with audiophiles. His physically giant yet not very efficient PS Audio P300 Power Plants were all the rage with audiophiles, as they truly improved the AC power, breathing new life into one’s audio system in ways most audio enthusiasts didn’t think was possible. The problem was that you couldn’t put very high-draw power amplifiers on the old PS Audio units, because they really only could convert about half of the power coming out of the wall into real energy for your system. Today’s systems, including the $2,195 (USD) PS Audio Power Plant Premier, are far more useful and efficient.”

You can read the whole review here: http://www.hometheaterreview.com/equipment-reviews/accessories-other-reviews/ac-power-product-reviews/ps_audio_juice_bar_ii_reviewed001098.php

The third, yet no less informative review appears in the online magazine Audiophilia. http://www.audiophilia.com/wp/ and is written by Martin Appel.

“The PPP is beautifully built and very sharp looking. It’s very solid and its sculpted faceplate is very attractive, with some really cool blue lighting. It has first-class fit and finish and should be displayed with pride. When people ask what it is, you can smugly say, ‘Why, my power regenerator, of course.’

“In conclusion, I think the bug has bitten again-I can’t let this piece of equipment leave the house. My system would be lonely without it.”

Need we say more?

End of life blowout!
I was delighted when Ayre’s new expensive preamp launch came with the announcement that they’ve eliminated their volume control and gone to a variable gain stage in the same way we did over five years ago with PS Audio’s Gain Cell.  A variable gain stage is the right way to build a preamplifier or integrated amplifier and Charlie Hanson of Ayre certainly knows great sound.  So, thanks for the vote of confidence.

The Gain cell, originally introduced in late 2004, has been the cornerstone of our audio products and set amazing standards for clarity, soundstage and lack of coloration at any volume setting.  Those of you who own a G Series amplifier, preamplifier or integrated Control amp know exactly what I am talking about.

If you’re unfamiliar with the products, you can go here to read about them. http://www.psaudio.com/ps/products/list/category/audio-classics/

After nearly five great years of sales for this product line, it’s time to close out the G Series and introduce its replacement, the PerfectWave series.  Over the next few months we’ll be launching new PerfectWave products starting with the PerfectWave DAC and Transport (see below).

In the meantime, we have a few G Series power amplifiers and integrated Control Amplifiers we’re selling to clear our stocks.  These are brand new A stock units with a full three year warranty (after registration).  They come with our 30-day in home trial so you can grab one, take it home and try it and if it isn’t what you want, send it back for a full refund.

The savings are excellent and we’re even kicking in free shipping.  Interested?  There aren’t many, so go here http://www.psaudio.com/ps/products/detail/g-series-end-of-life-blowout?cat=audio and get a bargain that won’t last long.

Pricing on the PerfectWave series announced
OK, the pricing on the PerfectWave series is finalized and higher than we initially hoped for.  Why?  Well basically because it isn’t the same product now as when we first started showing off the prototypes.  Here is the Reader’s Digest version of quite a long story.

When we first announced the PerfectWave Transport about 18 months ago, it was a small half width chassis with a simple two digit display that showed the track selected and we estimated it would sell for between $1000 and $1500.  At that time we had a working prototype of the unit that we displayed at the 2007 Rocky Mountain Audio Fest.  We demonstrated that the transport was a memory player and that it used a data extraction method similar to EAC where no error correction was used.  It was a very revolutionary product concept.

From that first public showing we gained a lot of feedback from consumers.  Folks loved the idea of the memory player.  They loved the idea we didn’t just cram a computer motherboard inside of a box - connect up a DVD ROM drive and call it high-end.  The fact that we built this concept piece with dedicated electronics and our own operating system was a huge step forward and our customers told us so.  

One of the criticisms we received was the unit’s size.  At just 8.5” wide the general feel was we needed to make this into a full size unit.  We also learned that a simple two-digit display for the tracks wasn’t really good enough.  Lastly, we learned that people were hoping for more; perhaps the ability to connect this transport up to a network and, hope upon hope, display cover art and song titles.  Yikes!

We went to work redesigning the piece into a full width version with a color screen that could show cover art and song titles and we unveiled this new concept piece at the January 2008 CES.  It was a huge hit.  We estimated pricing on this would be $1500 to $2000, maybe higher.

The feedback we got at that show was very positive but of course there was also some constructive criticisms: the color screen was too small, the knob for the volume as well as the buttons for control would be more elegant and useful if we made the screen into a touch control, lose the slot load drive, add more memory and finalize the network capabilities.  

We went back to the drawing boards and redesigned the chassis to fit a larger screen.  We spent months developing a touch screen controller and during the development process we figured our device would have to read computer files off a DVD because of the growing interest in high resolution audio.  The task of having the PWT read a DVD, which uses an entirely different file system then CD’s, was monumental.  Easy for a computer, almost impossible for our custom built operating system.

So now, 18 months later, we’re done taking feedback and are in the final stages of release for a March delivery.  It’s been a long and expensive road.  But now we have the only transport in the world that handles high resolution WAV files on DVD or CD up to 24 bit 192kHz, does not use a computer motherboard, built in Digital lens, 440,000 gate FPGA, network capable connection, loads cover art and song titles and frankly is the best sounding and most technologically advanced transport ever built in the world.

That this level of performance for the PWT’s price of $2999 is unheard of.  Yes, I understand it’s not the same price we originally tried for 18 months ago, but then it’s also not the same transport.  The matching PWD will also retail for $2999.  We will be taking preorders for both the PerfectWave series in a few days, so check back on the website.

To watch a 5 minute video explaining the PWT memory transport, head here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEtBMOa5NfQ

PWT plays HRx
While at CES in Vegas we held a press conference to unveil the world’s first showing of the PWT playing Reference recordings new HRx DVD’s directly.  The HRx discs are 176kHz 24 bit WAV files that are bit-for-bit copies of Keith Johnson’s master tapes and the difference between a CD copy of a Reference recording, compared to an HRx disc is jaw dropping; and the press was there to hear it for themselves.

One of the reasons we held a press conference is because no player or transport has ever been able to play an HRx disc directly until we unveiled it that day.  In fact, up until this point the only way you could play one of these discs is to put it into your computer.  But then you have the problem of getting it out!  USB will only support 96kHz so all you can really do is use Firewire - but Firewire isn’t supported by much.  It’s really been a problem.  

A couple of very expensive transports on the market and contemplated for the market will be able to play HRx discs in time, but then these are simply computers in a fancy audio box.  Not the quietest best environments for high end audio.  The PWT is the only transport in the world with its own dedicated operating system, capable of playi ng all these media.

The press conference was well attended and even Keith Johnson, the recording engineer for reference Recordings was there to bless the PWT and here Keith and I are together.

For those of you wondering why all this is important, as there are currently very limited high resolution media available, wonder no longer.  While at the show Sheffield announced they’ll be releasing their catalog on DVD and David Chesky will be releasing hundreds of titles from the Chesky label soon enough.  And here you thought SACD was good.  Well, I am here to tell you, you ain’t heard nothing yet!

Would you like a taste of high res for free?  Good friend and recordist Kent Poon is offering PS newsletter readers the chance to download some of his high resolution recordings (also available on DVD) for free. http://www.designwsound.com/dwsblog/?page_id=318

PWT makes history
Following our press party for the PerefectWave series of products, IAR reviewer Peter Moncrief came over and congratulated me for our success.  What Peter said next kind of knocked me off my feet.

Peter told me that for the first time in mankind’s history the people in this very room, where we stood, witnessed something no one had ever heard before.  Recorded music played back with both dimensions of the music waveform finally correct, because the crucial time dimension was now finally freed from the imperfections imposed by crude mechanics.

From the first Edison cylinders through to the advent of the CD, we’ve been working diligently at perfecting amplitude, but that’s just one of the two dimensions necessary for perfect playback of the music waveform.  We have not gotten the second necessary dimension, timing, right, because we have always relied on imperfect mechanics for timing. Peter immediately grasped the idea that the PWT is one of the first consumer products to ever get timing right, because it does not rely on mechanics for timing. And so the PWT is one of the first consumer products to get the whole music waveform really right, because it for the first time gets both dimensions of the music waveform right, the timing dimension and the amplitude dimension.

“The PS Audio Perfect Wave Transport (PWT) marks a milestone in the history of recorded sound for consumers, closing the first era (that stretches all the way back to its founding 130 years ago with Edison), and opening a new chapter. For the first time in history, with the PS Audio PWT the audio signal that a consumer hears is created not by crude mechanical means, but rather by the far more perfect purity of a crystal clock.”

“.... The PWT marks the first time in the history of recorded sound that an affordable consumer playback device is finally liberated from this handicap of mechanical means for creating the crucial time dimension half of the audio waveform. Finally, the consumer can hear an audio signal waveform, freshly created anew by the playback device, whose crucial time dimension has the perfection and purity of a low-jitter crystal clock, not the crude imperfections of some mechanical system.”

“The latest issue of a major magazine features a cover ambitiously headlining “CD Playback for the 21st Century”, but then reviews conventional players whose imperfect mechanics still infringe upon these CD players’ creation of the crucial time dimension, thereby distorting the two dimensional audio signal waveform these players create. Bzzzt! Sorry, wrong. Instead, it is actually the PS Audio PWT which represents the future of CD (and all silver disc) playback for this new century, by freeing us consumers for the very first time, and at long last, from the distortions we suffered under the tyrannical 130 year reign, of imperfect mechanics determining the time dimension half for all our audio waveforms.”

These excerpts are pretty powerful.  You can read peter’s entire blog on our discussion page here:

http://www.psaudio.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=23733#post23733

You can access Peter’s IAR website here: http://www.iar-80.com/

The PWD explained
Since this newsletter’s already quite long I wanted to drop a quick note about the progress of the PerfectWave DAC, the matching piece for the PerfectWave Transport.

The PWD will allow you to take full advantage of the PWT.  As good and low jitter as the PWT’s digital output is, there is simply no way to compete with the PWT’s HDMI based I2S output feeding the PWD’s HDMI I2S input.

Once you are running everything in native I2S the results are startling.  At the CES we delighted in demonstrating this to anyone willing to listen.  The basic idea is this: upsampling is only valuable when you are using a standard digital input like 99.9% of all DACS on the planet do.

Connecting the PerfectWave Transport with its asynchronous perfect clock, internal Digital Lens and I2S data transfer through HDMI to the DAC changes everything you might think about upsampling.  Hard to believe, but in this native format, 16 bit 44.1kHz data and sample rate sound far better than upsampling the same data to even 24 bit 192kHz!  And we’re not talking about small differences.  

So interestingly enough, both the PWT and PWD products cause us to have to rethink just about everything we “know” about digital audio.  Where most companies are putting their time and research money into building better upsampling technology, PS is leading the way by eliminating the need for upsampling.  Think what this setup must sound like when the media itself is high resolution.  Breathtaking, jaw dropping, simply awesome.

Lastly, the PWT is not the only high resolution reader that transfers data over I2S to the PWD.  We demonstrated the PWD with its optional network Bridge, controlled by a beautiful new interface on an iPhone at CES.  The Bridge also has a built in lens and delivers high resolution data over a network directly into the PWD as just another input.  Again, rethink everything you know about digital audio when thinking about the PerfectWave products.

Would you like to learn more about the PWD?  We made a short little video for you to watch and see all the features at work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKm6zDAb7G4

Preorder
Starting in February, we’ll setup a way for all our customers to preorder so watch for next month’s newsletter to let you know all about it.

This month’s special
We promised each month we’d have a couple of specials for our US customers.  This month we have the G Series end of life blowout and a couple of less expensive but no less fun products.

The first is a little personal project that intrigued me.  The Premier Soloist http://www.psaudio.com/ps/products/detail/soloist-premier-in-wall-special-edition .  You probably know the Soloist , the world’s only true in-wall AC power conditioner.  Plenty of you have installed these beauties as the beginning of your system because they are both effective as well easy to install.  

Ever since the introduction of the Power Port Premier , we’ve been getting folks asking if we can supply the Soloist with the Premier rather than the standard Power Port.  I wasn’t sure how much of a difference it would make and I didn’t know if there was anything inside we could tweak to get even more performance out of this new product.  Well, wow.  All I can say is “wow”.  

So since I don’t really know what the market demand is for this piece, I built up a few myself and sampled them around.  The results were unanimously positive.  OK, so here’s the deal.  We have custom built 200 Soloist Premiers with our little tweak inside and a brand new Power Port Premier.  Each one is hand built and it’s a numbered run.

Instead of charging more for these 200, we’re charging less.  While we have them, they are $249.99 each.  If you’re interested and live in the US, head over to the website and snap up however many you’d like.

The last piece is a nice little bundle with huge savings.  We call it the Harvester special.  Buy two and get one free.  Now that’s a huge savings and a heck of a deal.  The Noise Harvester is a wonderfully effective line noise eliminator and you can’t have enough Harvesters working on your behalf.  Go to our web page www.psaudio.com and just look for Specials.  This is only for US residents and if you are outside the US you may not be able to see this special on the website.

Till February
I was determined to start off the New Year with a very informative, fun to read newsletter that wasn’t too long.  I hope I achieved the first two parts of the goal, I am certain I didn’t achieve the last part.  Sorry.

Next month we’ll go more into depth of the PerfectWave products again as we near launch date.

Happy Listening!

Paul McGowan

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