June 2009 PS Newsletter

• Don’t read this!
• It’s about time
• We make the front cover
• Trade-up deal extended
• Trade-up deal ending
• Harley’s review of the Meridian CD player
• Revelations about beta testers
• Quick tutorial on cover art and song titles
• Facebook
  

Here it is - noon on a beautiful day and I am sitting at my computer monitor writing the newsletter when I should be outside smelling the breezes and listening to the birds - heck, even mowing the lawn.

Why am I not outside?  Because I am overly excited (see below) and the only way I can share my excitement with you is to sit down and pound out the words on my keyboard.  You also might be excited once you read what I have to say, but if it’s beautiful outside, go enjoy - then read.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am honored that you want to read what I have to say and if the day is beautiful, wait till the evening or when you’re at work to read this.

Just outside my home office window is a big blue spruce and on that spruce is the cutest little finch bobbing up and down in the warm summer breeze and looking right at me.  He’s outside looking in; I am inside looking out.  I wonder what he’s thinking.

It’s about time
When it comes to the PerfectWaves people are impatient; and frankly I don’t blame them.  Patience is certainly not one of my virtues.

So, I gotta relate a quick little story to you about patience.  I am standing in a public restroom at the urinal, taking care of business.  When you’re standing at a urinal you’re always facing the wall and so you really can’t tell what’s happening behind you.  Out of the blue, a small little hand grabs my belt, pulls me back away from the urinal and, as I look down in complete amazement, this little head pops in between me and the urinal with every intent on assessing my progress.  A small lad of about 5 looks up at me and says “you done yet?”  I just busted out laughing.

“Why, do you have to go?” I asked.

“Real bad mister, real bad.”  I admire a direct approach from people; so much so that I willingly gave up my spot to this precocious young man and walked away with a small, but life-changing event.  Patience, it’s a trait not many of us have.

But patient or not, sometimes the wait finally ends.  “PerfectWaves are shipping!”  I can’t tell you how long I have waited to write those words.  In fact, let me write them again.  “PerfectWaves are shipping!” Man that feels good.

As many of you know, we’ve been furiously writing software and fixing bugs with our beta testers all month.  In late May we sent out 25 pairs of PerfectWaves to Beta Testers all over the world and have been working with them on an almost daily basis to find out what they like and don’t like; then making final tweaks to perfect these beauties.

What most of you probably didn’t know is that the entire month of June has seen our Boulder production crew building the PerfectWave hardware day in and day out.  Our crew has been in the building every morning at 6:30 and working for a good 10 hours a day getting the PW’s perfect.

What’s frustrating about this process is we can’t actually load the final software to the units until Monday.  So, imagine our facility with 100 pair of the prettiest audio equipment on the planet, stacked up on racks and shelves, with lots of hungry customers awaiting their arrival - yet we’ve been unable to ship.

All that is changing Monday and we’re loading software and boxing the units up for shipment to our dealers, distributors and customers.  Yeah!

So now that they are on the way to the lucky few that signed up early, it’s ok to torture you a little by sharing some of the comments from the testers.

“When I was told that the jitter was non-measurable (meaning “world class”), I had some problems with my left eyebrow… until I made some tests, using red-book CD’s ... And then I understood. The level of detail provided by this platform is absolutely stunning. I’m not very good at words. But I know what I’ve heard and I know what I felt… Listening to Keith Jarrett’s Koln concert was a revelation.  I know that recording almost by heart but now it was something else…..  emotions and tears.  Yes, real tears… so don’t ask me to be objective because I didn’t make any measurements.  I just felt fire. And that’s perfection to me…”  Beta tester “Father”

“Redbook sounded better played via this system than any other digital system I have ever listened to. The HD files played native and via the PWD (as preamplifier), were stunning. The combination of this system and a truly high quality recording/source represents the proverbial “Holy Grail” for digital.  The best way to describe it would be to say more “musical.”  Timequest

“I used native resolution and auto filter for all the tracks. The experience was out of this world. I was totally immersed, and experienced proverbial goose bumps. I immediately invited my wife and my mother-in-law to listen to this song (a big risk) ..but they loved it as well.”  Suresh Reddy

“I think the PWT is doing more than just solving the jitter problem; in my view the PWT represents a paradigm shift in how digital is read and transmitted from the disk.  The PW duo create a very real and natural sound along with the same excitement and surprise I often get with vinyl.  The PWT is, as Paul stated, “the bargain of the century”  Robert Pike

“I think I was more impressed with 16/44 even more than the 24 bit files due to expectations - I expected the quality in the Hi Res stuff but the cd quality easily beats SACD and DVD audio which is a great achievement!”  Ken

“This is the best digital CD Red Book I have ever heard, guys. I am beyond impressed. It is opening up nicely after about 100 hrs on the system. VERY nice, indeed.”  Richard

“I would term it musical, with a vengeance.  I believe the PWT/PWD combo I termed something like fine well aged wine after dinner. Smooth, soothing, and inviting. They just beg you to come home from work, flip ‘em on and kick off your shoes. Listener fatigue was all but gone with the Beta testing I have done the past 11 days. ”  Oddeophile

And last but not least, a quote from Hi Fi News reviewer Keith Howard “Effortlessly detailed, it spits in the face of all who say that CD is inherently unmusical. “

Notice how many comments about the PW’s centered on their amazing ability to transform standard CD’s into musical wonders?  This by no means minimizes the importance of the PW series unique ability to play Hi Rez media, but it is a critical point and we’ll discuss more on this subject below in the section of Bob Harley’s review of the Meridian CD player.

We make the front cover
The August issue of Hi Fi News features the beautiful PerfectWave DAC and Transport on its front cover.  The last time we made the front cover of one of the Hi Fi mags was a number of years ago when Stereophile debuted the HCA-2 power amplifier.  It really is quite an honor.  The PW Series is as big (or bigger) a breakthrough product as the HCA-2 was and I feel no selfish guilt whatsoever in saying these products deserve the front cover of every magazine that matters.

Not only did we make the front cover but the pair was awarded the coveted Editor’s Choice award.  The review was a “quickie” and our heartfelt thanks go out to both Keith and Paul Miller who worked over weekends to get this done.

When you get a chance, pickup a copy of the August issue and read the whole review.

I’ll leave you with the full quote from Keith’s article.  “The PerfectWave combination proved to be one of the finest CD players I have heard.  Effortlessly detailed and yet never cold or cynical, it spits in the face of all who say CD is inherently unmusical”  Thanks Keith!

Trade-up deal extended
So, indeed we’re shipping the PW series in June, but just barely.  Let’s face it, June is over and we’re heading into July so we’ve agreed to extend the trade up deal one more month for the PW Series.  We fully understand a couple of things: that many of you want to wait until the PW’s start shipping before taking the plunge and this will have the effect of putting us even further into backorder.

First, let me remind folks who may be new to the newsletter just what the trade-up deal is and then I’ll mention something about the backorder.

The trade-up deal is one of the most talked about innovations we’ve ever launched and its resulted in a great number of trades being taken in already.  Here’s how it works.  We will accept any CD player, CD transport or D to A converter in trade for a new PW Series product.  In fact, we will give you the full original retail price for your trade (up to a maximum of $1000) as long as it is kind-for-kind.  This means, we accept any CD player or CD transport in trade for a PW Transport, and any DAC in trade for a PW DAC.

We’re kind of being sticklers about this process because the spirit of this program is to get those old products off your shelf and our new ones onto it.  We understand that one of the biggest roadblocks to upgrading equipment is what to do with the old ones!  Point in fact, I would be delighted to upgrade my 2nd generation iPhone to the newest one for a couple hundred dollars, but there’s no way to do it - so I won’t.  This program solves that basic dilemma and helps our customers get what they want.  If you’re interested, the program is available through most of our dealers or through us directly.  We base the value of your trade on the Audiogon Blue Book.

On Monday we start shipping PW’s in earnest (or as the British would say, “in anger”).  The goal will be to get the entire first 100 pairs out to folks and thus help relieve our growing backorder.  A backorder is really nice for any company, especially in these tough economic times, but a backorder is hard on customers and can dampen people’s enthusiasm for a product.  We understand this, believe me.

So, it may seem counter intuitive that we are extending the trade-up program because that will only increase the backorder; but we’re going ahead anyway.  When it comes down to the choice of keeping our products affordable and accessible to as many people as possible vs. a bit of frustration, affordable/accessible always wins out.  We hope to have the backorders filled by end of August if all goes well.

Trade-up deal ending
The PerfectWave power cable trade-up deal is ending.  The last day to take advantage of this is Tuesday the 30th - which means Wednesday the 1st it’s over (for those of you calendar challenged as I am).

This is the only way you’re going to get 25% off these new power cables, which are receiving near universal acclaim from everyone that’s tried them.  They really are a game changer.

The trade up gives you a 25% discount off the retail price for any power cable in the PerfectWave series.

All you have to do to take advantage of this is trade-in any aftermarket power cable of any value to receive your discount.

Interested?  Call your dealer, call us 866.406.8946, head to our website, but whatever you do, don’t wait.  The 30th is pretty much here.

Harley’s review of the Meridian CD player
As much as I love our industry and the people in it, I have to say there are only a handful of people and manufacturers that I really admire and look up to.  Robert Harley, from TAS, and Bob Stuart, from Meridian, are among those that I really admire and when the two interact, I am doubly interested.  Robert Harley I’ve known for years, I don’t think I’ve ever met Bob Stuart, but I certainly have followed Meridian for years and they are my kind of company: technically advanced and game changing.

So, when our customers and beta testers keep asking me to explain just what makes the new PerfectWave DAC sound so good - especially on standard Red Book CD’s - I struggle to explain about the new breed of apodising filters at work.  Certainly there are many aspects of the PWD that are standouts, but the type of digital filters in use, known as apodising filters, are truly game changing as is the performance of our DAC.  So imagine my surprise when I open up the August issue of the Absolute Sound Magazine (TAS) and here’s an article by one of my favorite technical writers, Robert Harley, explaining how they work, what they do and why they change the game forever for Red Book CD reproduction.  Then, following that is an even more interesting interview with Bob Stuart who offers some excellent insights into blind testing, perceptions and how people need time and space with their systems to make good evaluations.  Really interesting reading.

Apodising filters solve one of the biggest problems in digital playback, known as pre-ringing.  Pre-ringing is a very unnatural event and the ear is apparently quite sensitive to this phenomena.  Its importance to what we hear on a digital recording was first brought to our attention through an AES paper written by Dr. Peter Craven in 2005 and the work he and Bob Stuart have done on identifying this problem, the effects it has on what we hear and a special type of filter that not only reduces the phenomena in the DAC, but the CD itself!

This is truly ground breaking work and we’re delighted that we were able to bring the PWD out with the latest generation of filter sets that take advantage of much of their work.

Robert is a far better writer than I, so if you are interested in learning more about how these filters work, what they do to the sound and the cool new Meridian 808.2 Signature Reference CD player, pick up a copy of the August issue of TAS and have at it.

For those of you receiving your new PWD’s soon, there are several versions of apodising filters available to play with through the touch screen.  Have fun!  What a great learning experience awaits you.

Revelations about beta testers
Hmmmm, when I reread that topic opener it seems like I am about to unveil some dark dirty little secret about our beta testers.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

This beta test was both different and more effective than any we have ever done.  So far it’s an all around success and I just wanted to make a few comments about it.

In the past we’ve taken 10 or so prototype engineering samples, sent them out to beta testers for review and waited for their feedback.  This process worked well but had a few of flaws: the hardware wasn’t an actual production unit, any changes we made had to be handled through back and forth shipping and the beta units were loaned out as a sort of privilege - and so the testers were overly considerate when it came to identifying flaws.

Our new beta test system is radically different.  The hardware is a finished product, we have nearly 3 times the number of testers, the changes we made were handled through software updates (rather than shipping), and the units were all owned by the beta testers.  The results are remarkable.  This was, by far, the best beta test program we have ever launched and it will be our intention to make sure all our beta test programs work in exactly the same way.

What we discovered through this process creates a whole new paradigm in evaluation and critical feedback.  People who have a vested interest in the products tend to be a lot more critical than those who are borrowing something.  Moreover, the level of caring, the diligence of the work (sometimes into the night) just blew us away.  I don’t think there’s been a day goes by where I am not addressing the concerns of one of the 25 beta testers.  It’s really an extraordinary experience.

In fact, James Darby just posted his own review now that beta testing has ended.  You can read it here: Stereo Mojo Review .

I would like to extend a personal thank you to all the beta testers as well as our own engineering team for their hard work on this monumental project.

I would like to give a very special thanks to Jon Magnusson who was the team leader on this project as well as pretty much single handedly engineering the PWD and the upcoming network Bridge.

And, a very fond thank you to Nucu Jitariu and his team of programmers, responsible for the PerfectWave transport; which is a piece of sheer genius.  Both Nucu and Jon are some of those rare Audiophile/engineers that eat this kind of work for breakfast.  They live and breathe this stuff and the long hours and weekends spent writing and rewriting code to make this project a success is a true reflection of their love for this project.

If I knew even one tenth of what they know I’d be a smart man.

Quick tutorial on cover art and song titles
Second to last on this month’s newsletter is something of interest to those of you getting ready to receive your new PWT.  It concerns the cover art and song title feature of the PWT and how to use the web interface included with the new CD transport.

First, let me explain how this works.  The PWT will go and find the cover art and song titles of any CD you place into the PWT.  It’s really quite startling to watch this happen and continually brings a smile to my face every time it works.  How does it do this?  By accessing the internet and the PS Audio GlobalNet server where we store about 4 million CD’s of information.

Accessing this server couldn’t be easier.  I quote from beta tester James Darby.  “.... if you have ever purchased a product that claimed (easy access) you probably drove yourself crazy trying to get it to connect to your network and ended up waiting on hold for a hour to talk to someone at technical support. I know I have.

In this case, I plugged the cable from my router into the back of the PWT and a few seconds later I was connected.  Perfectly.  That alone goes to show the pains to which the team at PS Audio went to make the system user friendly.  I think PS Audio has shown that easy operation is attainable with enough time, work and caring about their end users.  Are you listening Microsoft?”

But we all know that many of the CD’s we as high-end people play, simply are not cataloged anywhere on anyone’s servers - except maybe ours - with your help.  So here is how it works.

Let’s say you put in a CD that the PWT doesn’t recognize.  Reference Recordings are a good example as not many of them are listed on any of the standard databases like those used by iTunes, etc.  The info is readily available from Reference or Google, but it is not something anyone in the music cataloging services seems to care about.  Audiophiles care a lot.  We care a lot.

So, to remedy this, you take a moment and locate the cover art either from Reference Recording’s website or from Google images.  It’s a snap to do this.  Then, you click on PS Audio’s GlobalNet tab on our home page at www.psaudio.com and click on PerfectWave.  If you’ve registered your device, then your own personal playlist page appears and there (amazingly enough) is a copy of everything you’ve played on your PWT!  Including the Reference disc that had no cover art or song titles listed.

Click on “edit” and then load the cover art for the Reference Recording.  Add the song titles by typing them into the edit section and then press “update” and you’re done.  Now, when you play the same disc again, the cover art appears as do the song titles.  But here is the best part - you just updated the PS worldwide server so anyone, anywhere in the world, now has access to the same art and song titles.

Every time you upload your changes, the world benefits.  It’s a truly collaborative effort that will help the High-End community we all enjoy and want to have fun in.

Can’t wait to see how this blossoms into something really cool.

Facebook

I am not sure how this happened but some great fans of the company apparently created a PS Audio Facebook page much to our surprise.  I just joined!  Go to facebook www.facebook.com and search for psaudio and you’ll come to the page.  I just checked and there are 29 people signed up as fans (or whatever you call them) and I am the latest.  Click the link at the top and join.  I am not sure what it all means as Facebook is kind of new to me, but it is kind of fun.

Till July
Thanks for taking the time to read this newsletter.  Hopefully we can keep it interesting and fun.  Tuesday I am off to Phoenix to meet with the Phoenix audio society and show off the new PW toys.  If you have an audio society or club that you’d like us to visit, feel free to drop us a note and we’ll see what we can schedule.

Paul McGowan

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