There’s a new arrival!

Say hello to our new PerfectWave SACD Transport.

The PerfectWave SACD Transport (PST) is is our most advanced optical disc transport. As with the PST’s predecessors, the PWT and DMP, PST is based upon an advanced Digital Lens which electrically isolates the mechanical transport/laser mechanism of the optical disc reader, removes jitter and timing artifacts, and focuses audio data into a single, bit-perfect, timing-perfected stream to your DAC.

New to this model—and for that matter, any disc player ever made—is our galvanically isolated output stage. By coupling the output of the drive mechanism to PST’s internal Digital Lens by nothing more than a pulse of energy across space, any hints of noise or ground contamination are eliminated. The results of this complete isolation are magical: a previously unheard level of image separation, openness, and effortless reproduction. Never have we experienced noise levels this low—a seemingly velvet blackness that must be experienced to understand.

CD, data discs, and SACD reproduction is unequaled by any other player we know of. CDs played through PST come closer than ever to high-resolution PCM and DSD, uncovering new layers of dimensionality, soundstage, depth and musicality previously unobtainable in other optical readers or server-based audio systems.

PST is just now entering its beta testing phase as our folks reach out to potential testers. Production begins in earnest in October.

If you haven’t yet checked out our newest product, the PST, maybe it’s time you do.

Music takes 13 minutes to ‘release sadness’ and 9 to make you happy

Music is all about emotion and few among us would disagree that some music can seriously affect our moods.

New research from the British Academy of Sound Therapy (BAST) has shown there is a common dosage for music and revealed how long an individual needs to listen to it for a therapeutic effect to be experienced.

In recent years, psychologists have proven that music can have a positive effect on our health, so researchers at BAST were keen to discover whether it would be possible to prescribe music to help us with specific mood states.

Their study, Music as Medicine, tested 7,581 participants and found that 89 percent believed music to be essential for their health and wellbeing, so there’s no doubt that it plays an important part in our daily lives.

The best music for relaxation had a slow tempo, simple melody, and no lyrics, with an optimum listening time of 13 minutes – and many benefits were reported, including ‘decreased muscle tension, negative thoughts disappearing, feeling peaceful and contented and being able to sleep better’.

The Beethoven Problem

We all love our vinyl but let us not forget its many flaws. In particular, inner groove distortion.

When vinyl spins the stylus follows in a spiral pattern. That spiral brings us ever closer to the center of the record where there is less and less room for modulation (think of the difference between the open and closed state of an accordion’s bellows). As we near the disc’s center, it becomes harder to play loud passages without distortion because there is less room for the big wiggles necessary for loud music—and the louder the passage, the more distortion we’re likely to encounter.

To combat inner groove distortion, recording and mastering engineers prefer to place softer cuts of music near the end of the disc, reserving an album’s first tracks for the loudest (where there’s more room for big groove wiggles).

Which brings us to the Beethoven problem…