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Review and Measurements of PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC

hmscott

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Yup, but they have come a very long way since I met them in the late 70's (1978?) when I went in to get my out-of-warranty PS Audio Preamp fixed.

They don't seem to have lost their enthusiasm for audio and have a lot more equipment for testing and measurement, and better facilities for production.

I've been fortunate to have worked on production for electronics and software in very large multi-national companies and very small R&D companies, it really is very different everywhere.

Usually, there are very enthusiastic people with a lot of engineering know-how, but little production, QA, Test, experience, and they would benefit from that big company process heavy experience to bring consistency, optimization, and stability to their releases.

But, they do the best they can with what they have :)
 
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noiseangel

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@hmscott

Usually, there are very enthusiastic people with a lot of engineering know-how, but little production, QA, Test, experience, and they would benefit from that big company process heavy experience to bring consistency, optimization, and stability to their releases.

But, they do the best they can with what they have :)

I know of one man companies that do a lot better than PS Audio do with a lot less. Its not so much about the test and development equipment they have, the big shiny building they just bought, its about the talent that does the engineering and design and then uses the test equipment to verify their work. There are plenty of big companies that make rubbish. Its also a shame that the testing is left up to people like Amir and ASR. Be honest, the Directstream DAC measures like a high school student project, Amir has shown that.

Its no good making 10000 pieces of equipment from their larger production facilities if that 10000 pieces of equipment is rubbish.

The Paying Customer is always right, and in the real world to PS Audio - we are their Potential Customers. :)

And for the record PS Audio have nothing I would consider to be worthy of being in my rack. They never produce a full set of tests the way Amir does.
 

hmscott

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@hmscott



I know of one man companies that do a lot better than PS Audio do with a lot less. Its not so much about the test and development equipment they have, the big shiny building they just bought, its about the talent that does the engineering and design and then uses the test equipment to verify their work. There are plenty of big companies that make rubbish. Its also a shame that the testing is left up to people like Amir and ASR. Be honest, the Directstream DAC measures like a high school student project, Amir has shown that.

Its no good making 10000 pieces of equipment from their larger production facilities if that 10000 pieces of equipment is rubbish.



And for the record PS Audio have nothing I would consider to be worthy of being in my rack. They never produce a full set of tests the way Amir does.
Why don't you call them up and ask them nicely for a visit/tour? And, be sure and let them know your misgivings and what you want to see to allay your concerns about their operation.

Please let us know what they say, and please fill us in on what you see when you come back. :)
 

noiseangel

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I know someone in Colorado who has been there. @lemnoc knows him too. We don't have to go and see what they make or what they do or how they do it, we have been told. Also MacGowan and his "Engineers" make enough videos to tell us whats going on in there. I'm not going to denigrate this thread by getting involved in a slanging match with you. Amirs results speak for themselves. My comments are based on what he has measured and based on that PS Audio have nothing I would want to see in my rack. My misgivings are they are terrible engineers as evidenced by Amir's measurements. Extremely poor performance for something in that price range. There is no denying that. I don't have to defend my comments based on what he measured. If you want to have a go at someone have a go at Amir. They are his measurements.

Needless to say, I cannot in any shape or form recommend the PerfectWave DirectStream DAC.
 
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noiseangel

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@hmscott Here is my concern. The PS Audio is ninth from the bottom at $6000. I'm not sure how many DAC's are in the list, probably over 150 I dont know. And not far from the top at 16th is the Topping D50s at $400.

"Excuse me Paul can you tell me why I should pay $6000 for your DAC when I can get a much better Topping for $400?"

Insert answer here...................................................................................................


1620133224070.png


Or for $700 you can get second place.
1620134223985.png
 
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mansr

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Actually no cognitive dissonance at all. The testing and measuring of electronic equipment has evolved over many years and when correct measuring techniques and equipment are used, based on that 100 years of knowledge the results are generally accepted as being credible.

Based on 6 months of testing on 30000 people from a sample of 7.8 billion people (Not that large) and the side effects that are now coming out, you can have my dose and the rest of my families dose for your family. Help yourself to it mate. Be my guest.
You clearly need a primer on statistics. Also on the concept of thread topics.
 

hmscott

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But still no comment about the PS Audio DAC and what a piece of junk it is?
In the grand scheme of things I could care less what you think of a DAC I don't own, let alone one I would never spend that much money on to listen to music, no matter how magical it was.

I was responding to your certainty what goes on inside a company you've never worked at or visited.

We've got no clue what goes on there day to day, and they only show and answer what pleases them or benefits them. The same as anywhere else.

On top of that your commentary suggests to me you've never worked in the electronics design and manufacturing field, and only have a passing sense gained mostly by looking at Amir's measurements.

You've got a lot to learn. Which is a great place to be, but from experience, I can tell you noone will want to hire a person as negative as you have presented yourself here. People want to work with, and companies prefer hiring positive people that can work in a constructive way with others.

Work on your technical and people skills, and get the vaccines when you can, help make your life a long one. :)
 
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noiseangel

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This is something we have not seen before. Intermodulation distortion between the tones is much higher at low frequencies than high. That pushes the distortion floor to just 60 dB. That gives the stunningly low distortion-free dynamic range of just 10 bits! Yes, this is bad. Really bad. Let's keep going with THD+N versus frequency:

Let's ignore for now that the entire curve is way, way up there (i.e. is bad). We have the same rise in low frequency distortions we saw in multitone test. What explains that? Use of output transformer! Ted Smith said he built his prototype using Jensen transformers. Jensen is the king of high-quality audio transformers. But high-quality does not mean high performance in vocabulary of audio DACs.
 

noiseangel

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In the grand scheme of things I could care less what you think of a DAC I don't own, let alone one I would never spend that much money on to listen to music, no matter how magical it was.

I was responding to your certainty what goes on inside a company you've never worked at or visited.

We've got no clue what goes on there day to day, and they only show and answer what pleases them or benefits them. The same as anywhere else.

On top of that your commentary suggests to me you've never worked in the electronics design and manufacturing field, and only have a passing sense gained mostly by looking at Amir's measurements.

You've got a lot to learn. :)

Many assumptions non of which are correct. I believe Amir as he has credentials that we all know. I'm pretty sure not much goes on at PS apart from making videos about how they want you to believe how good their products are. If they spent half as much time bettering their products instead of being a bunch of video queens we wouldn't even be having this out on here. Do you work for them or something?
 

noiseangel

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@hmscott my apologies you are a donor
 

HoweSound

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Back to the topic at hand - PS Audio; My first step into less than mediocre audio equipment was my purchase of the PS Audio GCC-100 amp. I'm still using it as my main amp. The styling is weird, but its well made and to my ears dead quiet and colourless. I also have their old digital link iii dac, built like a tank with balanced output, just now replacing it with a new balanced dac. It seems PS Audio changed direction after producing these components. There was a hiatus when they stopped making amplification and went big into the noise and power end of the pool. I was interested to read about the Directstream when it was released, but I found Paul's announcements and newsletters becoming more and more flakey and harder to read and lost interest in anything they were doing. I don't understand what happened to them.
 

noiseangel

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Back to the topic at hand - PS Audio; My first step into less than mediocre audio equipment was my purchase of the PS Audio GCC-100 amp. I'm still using it as my main amp. The styling is weird, but its well made and to my ears dead quiet and colourless. I also have their old digital link iii dac, built like a tank with balanced output, just now replacing it with a new balanced dac. It seems PS Audio changed direction after producing these components. There was a hiatus when they stopped making amplification and went big into the noise and power end of the pool. I was interested to read about the Directstream when it was released, but I found Paul's announcements and newsletters becoming more and more flakey and harder to read and lost interest in anything they were doing. I don't understand what happened to them.

I have also heard their older gear is quite good. You are right something went wrong along the way. I really gave up on them when MacGowan started pushing the audiophile fuses. Ever since then I find anything they say hard to believe.

If you ever get the chance to borrow a DS DAC get it and have a listen to it. I really want @amirm to get that one back he tested with the new "Sunlight" upgrade. I cant see how it can make it any better and the thing is here it may make it worse as PS publish no test results...ever.
 

AdamG

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Thread Notice: Removed a Bunch of off topic and political science posts. These actions were the result of many separate Reports. I only deleted posts this time. Any more Vaccination comments will earn you more than a post deletion.

My Delete Post finger is cramping now. Happy!
 

Jim Matthews

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noiseangel

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Omigod I dodged a bullet, there!
You dodged a 50 Cal. Its terrible. Just saying its terrible cannot convey how terrible it is. MacGowan was right when he said I would hear things I have never heard before. I did and they should not have been there.
 
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