I admit that when I’m feeling particularly defeated, I often search for “PS Audio” on this forum so I can enjoy some good ol’’ self-serving schadenfreude. Today I actually read this entire thread, so you know I’m really plumbing the dankest depths of pettiness.
It wouldn’t be nearly as fun if there weren’t a few seagull attacks from PS Audio acolytes (zombies?) mixed in here coming to the defense of their captors, as there are on this one. You know there’s some serious brainwashing going on when somebody’s going to bat for a $400 electric chair in a box.
Personally, I don’t particularly care if Paul McGowan sells any worthwhile products, because I already know he sells one that has gazillions of gullible audio enthusiasts in thrall (myself included, in spite of myself)—and it is so perversely vile in its wretched manipulation that it achieves levels of felonious tactics I never knew were possible.
It’s his most coveted invention, a triumphant combination of FOMO, despicable price gouging and promotion of fake science all bundled up in one coup de grace—namely, his Perfectwave (formerly DirectStream) SACD transport. Pause for a moment of reverent silence. Note the word “transport”—it’s nothing more than an oft-unreliable optical drive in a sexy box, weighed down by what must be lead bricks because the damn thing doesn’t even have a DAC. But nobody cares about that, because what it does have is an arcane little digital output on its back, the technology around which McGowan has literally defined his brand. Once I mention it, go search for his insufferable number of videos on YouTube plugging a bunch of wildly specious claims about it.
To further underscore my pettiness, my fundamental resentment towards this $7,000 juggernaut is the fact that I go through periodic fits where—despite the fact that I know better—I really
want one. Why? Because it is, indisputably, the only SACD player that exists on Earth (search around and you’ll see) that through God knows what sort of dirty dealings is capable of passing the pure, unadulterated, native DSD digital stream to any DAC that has an input with the titular and now proprietary “PS Audio i2S pinout”. That’s right, that same i2S format that Paul stridently claims, in the complete absence of evidence, is the best “sounding” (!)
digital transmission protocol ever invented.
The reason this admittedly innovative device is such a tantalizing concept, especially for those of us who for whatever reason accumulated a large and expensive library of SACD discs, is because prior to the release of this thing, Sony’s DRM licensing regulations required that all audio outputs from SACD players, even their own, must be downsampled to a maximum 48khz/16 bit format—via the player’s own internal DDC converter of God knows what quality. The only exception to this is the HDMI audio output, which remains a closed system (note that such inputs are mysteriously absent from DACs). So other than some cheaply made and unreliable (trust me, I’ve tried them) HDMI to i2S de-embedders selling from the bowels of China on eBay, this device is literally the
only way to play your SACD libraries through the DAC/amp of your choice.
Hence the FOMO. It costs $7,000. It’s not even about whether this particular method of listening to music sounds any good—it’s purely about
wanting to see it work. Nobody
anywhere has been able to hear this—so I for one am someone who periodically has a nervous breakdown because I
can’t.
There’s all sorts of subterfuge from Paul’s lackeys on the PS Audio forums skirting around how they managed to pull this off—how it could only be accomplished (without unleashing Sony’s lawyers) by the use of that esoteric i2S connector. That very same i2S that handily wipes the floor with USB or S/PDIF, of course. They’re basically outing Paul’s motivation for promoting the hell out of this otherwise inscrutable connector, and for his creation of a proprietary pinout (to sell more of his $7,000 DACs, of course), but none of his worshipers over there seem to notice, or even care. They think he’s created the most ingenious product ever to grace the audiophile market—this $7,000 hollow box with tumbleweeds inside rolling around the vast spaces between the crappy optical drive, power supply and i2S port.
Don’t believe me? Get a load of this, prominently displayed all over PS Audio’s website:
“Locked inside your CD and SACD collection is a wealth of music you've not yet heard. How do we know that? Because we, like you, know what to expect from our reference discs.
Imagine our surprise and delight as the first notes played on our new, galvanically isolated, PerfectWave SACD Transport. It was love at first listen. The PerfectWave SACD player is an engineering triumph—our finest achievement in musical reproduction and information retrieval from optical media. Breathe new life into your CD collection played through any DAC. Send the raw DSD layer of SACD into your I2S input DAC so you can hear, for the first time, what's long been unavailable to external DACs in these high-resolution discs. Winner of the 2021 Golden Ear Award from
The Absolute Sound”.
Yes, it’s a total ripoff. A sham. A ruse. Priced shamelessly. But you can’t really call it snake oil, because it does offer something that no other manufacturer can offer you, for reasons that remain undisclosed and uninvestigated—because all the corporate-funded audiophile websites are dazzled by it, no questions asked. Whoever owns the i2S patent must be deliriously happy that somebody found a use for it.
And yes, during moments of mystifying weakness. I occasionally want one, just because. Hence the schadenfreude.
@amirm, please keep these PS Audio reviews coming—they’re the only thing keeping me from throwing 7 grand into the furnace. And if I ever give in I could never show my face on this site again, assuming I survive the electrocution…