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Review and Measurements of PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC

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amirm

amirm

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Well, I made the upgrades to my PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC. Added the Edcor XS4400 transformers, added Farad Super 3 Power Supply, and 3M AB6005S EMI absorber. Sounds great, but I don't know if it is psychoacoustics. Wish I could get some measurements.... Have to see if I start using it more than my CD player and turntable. In the past I could never figure out why people started streaming, and got rid of their other source components. Maybe this will change.
I wish I was less busy and could measure it for you. If you want to pay for private testing, I can do that for you.
 

C. Cook

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I once owned one of these DACs that I got at a steep discount (still way more than I've ever paid for a DAC). I sold it after the initial ASR review and some side-by-side listening tests on more 'resolving' JBL 4367 speakers that a friend brought over in a large SUV. Prior to the review, I was pretty happy with the sound on my own speakers when using Roon and the XLR ins/outs going straight to a Hypex nc500 DIY amp and using the PS Audio as a preamp. I even brought in a highly regarded Krell pre for a demo and decided it definitely impacted the sound...in a negative way - more stuff in the signal path/chain usually not good. I first discovered PS Audio back when they were making pretty good DACs and class D amps for the time and was very happy with the Digital Link III (ca. 2010 connected to a different Krell integrated amp) that used a commercially available Burr Brown DAC chipset. The "Perfect Wave DSD" had a very similar sonic profile to that one, which I guess I'd describe as 'smooth'...My personal 'reference tracks' are not what most would probably use. Ex. Billy Joel's album "52nd Street" sounded fine enough on the Perfect Wave but really damn good on the old Digital Link III.

All of that said, yes, these firmware updates are BS. I went through several of them, made the mistake of creating an account at PSA's forums where I was ganged up on and flamed for 1) asking for some transparency on these numerous updates (like what was WRONG with the previous one and what is the difference, exactly) and 2) joining in when someone posted ASR's measurements and review to point out the obvious: it doesn't test well...at all.

The way PSA cultists describe these firmware "upgrades" (or do they just call them "updates"?) is that one isn't necessarily an improvement over the previous ones, rather a different sonic profile addressing literally every possible facet of the sound. It's ridiculous, frankly, reading some of these guys go on and on about how the imaging is better now or certain instruments are more detailed, etc. I wish someone could send in a Digital Link III for Amir to test because I'm betting it outperforms the DSD Perfect Wave; one of the things I said at the forums that got me flamed was that it sounded better than the Perfect Wave. That was blasphemy to them as you might guess.
 

LEFASR160

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typo error: "As predicated, there is no change of substance in the two releases of the DAC firmware/FPGA image."
 

welsh

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It is not right to make personal mockery, much less compare someone with a terrorist!!!

Steel chassis are cheaper and better than aluminum. Just be careful to keep distances to the walls (at least 6 mm, better 10 mm). If they are made of aluminum, they must be of much thicker walls.
He looks more like a tourist than a terrorist. Anyway, in American English both words sound the same…
 

MediumRare

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In the rest of the world, an American tourist is a terrorist.
Really? Last time I checked tourism was 10% of the UK GDP and the US was the #1 source of tourists to the UK. Of course, since Brexit the share from US tourists would have gone up.
 

sjeesjie

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Wow that’s bad!
You’d almost say they do it on purpose so you want a PS Audio pwer station or whatever those things are called to get lower noise!
 

Caliban

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I have a confession to make ;
I have owned, not just one, but two direct stream dacs from PS-Audio.
The first one was a DS Junior DAC (now discontinued)
The second was the one tested here.
It all began with the usual "what can I improve on my rig", which at the time consisted of
a Hegel H360 and a pair of Dynaudio Focus 160 speakers. I used the internal dac on the 360 as the main source for listening.
- " It is time for a new dac" I said to myself.
Not that I was disappointed in any way with how my rig sounded at the time, but everything can always be better !
The never ending search for that audio-nirvana. I think a lot of you know what I mean.

A lot of reading/researching and comparing reviews ended with a need to purchase the sensational DS Junior DAC.
Proprietary FPGA conversion and free updates for improved sound quality, what is not to like about that !

My first Junior lasted for about a week or so, then it started to develop problems when navigating
user menues using the button beside the display. The volume knob also had a strange feeling in the
feedback when rotated. It is actually a stepper motor that are used as an encoder. Quite clever really.
The other thing I noted was that the unbalanced outputs on the Junior produced a faint "out of phase mains buzz"
when connected to my headphone amplifier. The balanced outs was connected to the Hegel.
With either left OR right rca connected the buzz was not there, but with both connected it came back.
Same thing when I connected DS to the Hegel line inputs - with xlr disconnected of course.
- "You have a ground loop !" said the - initially helpful - support at PS Audio.
The hp-amplifier was tried with a battery as powersource and the only connection to the Junior was the hp-amp,
both standing alone on a table. The only ground was through DS mains cable, which by the way was fed from
an isolation transformer I had in my lab with midpoint ground on secondary side, it has no ground on primary side.
Still the out of phase buzz was there, tracking the hp-amp volume, how can there be a ground loop now ?
I asked on the PS Audio forum, the thread ended in that it must be a grould loop issue and nothing else.
However I got a private reply from another user suffering from the same issue. He had sold his Junior by then.

The Junior was now sent back to dealer with comment that apart from the navigation problem, there was also a ground loop issue.

A new one arrived - navigation worked as intended, volume feedback was ok, but the mains noise on unbalanced
outputs was the same. A long discussion with PS Audio support ended with me insisting that they should try
the Junior unbalanced outputs to an amplifier with common grounding for the rca-sleeves and listen for themselves.
The answer then was just that my dac is within its specifications and nothing was wrong. Sure.

I lived with that for a few months (I did not use headphones a lot during this time)

Then I got an offer from my dealer to exchange the Junior to a Senior dac (the one tested here) for a very small added price !
Whay could go wrong, this one must be a better one, right ?

Ok, the Senior was mine for about a year. More noise than the Hegel DAC (a little less than Junior anyway).
The GUI was sometimes upside down after boot, so I constantly had to recalibrate the screen. Odd indeed.
Sometimes after boot, there was just noise in one channel when playing music.
No out of phase noise on the unbalanced outs !
And about these updates - I had to repeat some updates several times after another for them to succeed.
Sometimes the sound was like an old 78rpm recordning after update was finished.
I asked why this was never an issue when you update the simplest of bluetooth speakers for example.
Or a motherboard BIOS, either it works, or is does not. Are there no checksums or whatever ?
I was told that it was important where the FPGA decided to store the code in memory, and that it affected sound quality.
Ok..
After one of the updates (after sucess), I heard that at low volume that sound became distorted, just like crossover distortion.
I reverted back to the previous version and then I sold the DS. I got almost as much as I paid for it.
I am done with PS Audio. This was about 4 years ago and long before I found this place.
Enough said.
 
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C. Cook

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I also owned both. It looks like you purchased direct from PSA. Hopefully you didn't pay full retail. When I got mine, I went through The Music Room Audio (tmraudio.com) which at the time was an authorized PSA retailer. They would always knock a good 40% off the retail price when I started balking about price or asking about "open box" items, so I know that PSA had set retail way higher than they needed to in order to turn a profit. One issue which I had similar to yours was with the Direct Stream Junior; when I reported dissatisfaction with how it was behaving (some malfunction or other), they simply said "send us the DS Jr. and we'll make an even exchange for the DS Sr., but if you want the network card (streaming) you'll need to throw in another $700." That's how I ended up with their top of the line DAC.

Never had any issues with sound quality or the firmware updates failing though. The whole reason I was turned onto that company to begin with was that back in the mid 2000s I had purchased a used PS Audio DAC off of eBay and was very happy with it. The sound at the time was for me revelatory. It used Burr Brown DA converter chips, though, not PS Audio FPGA. In 2017 or so I regretted selling that DAC and wanted something similar, so with the "good deal" I got on the DS Jr. I pulled the trigger and ended up in an odyssey similar to yours. Ultimately Amir tested it here and I said screw this, sold it and bought a couple of smaller, cheaper, better DACs and eventually got rid of my PS Audio M700 mono amps as well. Again, I never had any complaints about sound quality from either of the PS Audio DACs, but it's probably because I usually just played music loud and listened off-axis. I also think it's pretty hard for most people with 40+ year old ears to tell a difference between most DACs regardless of distortion, so long as it's overall better than vinyl or whatever. Either way, same here - Nuff said - No more PS Audio in my house!
 

Caliban

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Thank you for the input C. Cook !
Of course in the beginning I could hear The Big Improvment, but that faded quickly when the dacs revealed their "personalities".
Actually, quite soon into my ownership, I could not hear any notable difference in sound qualiy between the DS dac and H360 internal dac.
There was a bit more background noise coming from the tweeters with the DS dacs, but that was it. A little less so from the DS Senior vs. Junior.
But when I heard that "crossover distorsion" with dac volume accidentally set close to 0, I just..no, I am done with this.
It does not matter if I never use dac volume as it is used with an integrated amplifier, this is just plain crap with
all the other things taken into account.
Premium price also means expected "premium behaviour", but that is not what you get here.

If you read PS Audio forum, the word "personality" seems to apply to several of their products.

By the way - I bought the DS from an authorized dealer.
 
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C. Cook

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I think I got my own chronology wrong. Not that it really matters, but I bought the Junior from the authorized dealer and then when it started having problems I was referred directly to PS Audio who exchanged it for the Sr. I should say something else, I never had a bad experience with any PS Audio employees. They were always super prompt, nice and helpful. Would definitely recommend on that basis if not the engineering or price of the products. They make most of their stuff here in the US, employ people, and from what I can tell it's a nice place to work. Shame about their test results. The personality issues I had with them happened in their comment forums. Bunch of cultists.
 

SoundGuy

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I have a DSDSr DAC and it sounds good with Windom. The transformer output is obviously not going to measure well in the bass and it will necessarily have a low noise floor in the LF. It does indeed sound more like vinyl (a terrible media for science quality but a sound still loved and cherished). While I espouse the scientific measurements approach there is no doubt that some forms of distortion can be pleasant - why else is there loudness wars - why buy old dated vintage designs…

I totally agree with DSD Sr component not being recommended on this science focused site! However, I must say that as a Stereophile A+ recommended component it is absolutely charming with Windom version in the FPGA. I will add that I find PS Audio to be way too much hand waiving in the science department but they do score highly with their products because they actually do extensive listening tests. Kind of a tinkering approach to design rather than top down scientific driven approach. Of course successful companies must use both approaches.
 

Drakkar Noir

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I bought a DS Jr demo so I got a good price for it. Got it because the DS Jr pretty much had all the features I was looking for back then and the company itself seemed to have a nice Schiit-like upgrade program. Never really had a problem with it, to be honest, but as DACs go these days, spending that much money on something that measures so poorly just doesn't sound very sexy.
 

BN1

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I bought a DS Jr demo so I got a good price for it. Got it because the DS Jr pretty much had all the features I was looking for back then and the company itself seemed to have a nice Schiit-like upgrade program. Never really had a problem with it, to be honest, but as DACs go these days, spending that much money on something that measures so poorly just doesn't sound very sexy.
Yeah, when you spend a lot of $ on a product you expect it to be engineered well throughout
 

YSC

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I bought a DS Jr demo so I got a good price for it. Got it because the DS Jr pretty much had all the features I was looking for back then and the company itself seemed to have a nice Schiit-like upgrade program. Never really had a problem with it, to be honest, but as DACs go these days, spending that much money on something that measures so poorly just doesn't sound very sexy.
yea, one likely won't notice or not audibly annoying, but paying premium for such performance and lablling it as high fedility ... just don't feel good
 

ash1980

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Do we have any review of the older version of this? PSAudio DirectStream Junior.
I have one available in my local area for half the price ($2100). Wondering if it's worth the money?
 

AudioSceptic

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Do we have any review of the older version of this? PSAudio DirectStream Junior.
I have one available in my local area for half the price ($2100). Wondering if it's worth the money?
I see you joined only last October so perhaps you haven't read all of the PS Audio reviews here. Even if the device you mention goes against form and actually does perform well, how could it possibly be worth buying even at half price when you can get state of the art for a fraction of that?
 

ash1980

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I see you joined only last October so perhaps you haven't read all of the PS Audio reviews here. Even if the device you mention goes against form and actually does perform well, how could it possibly be worth buying even at half price when you can get state of the art for a fraction of that?
I agree. I am new to all of this :) Below are some reviews that I read, hence the thought.

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/ps-audio-directstream-junior-redcloud-vs-nuwave-dsd-dac-review/
It seems Steve Huff is going nuts regarding PS audio junior DAC/Streamer/Pre Amp.

https://taww.co/post/174486643147/review-ps-audio-directstream-junior-dac

I would love to hear any suggestions you have? Just so you know I have Dali Rubicon 5 towers and Parasound A21 power amp. I am looking for a Pre-Amp + DAC + Streamer combination.
 

HarmonicTHD

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I agree. I am new to all of this :) Below are some reviews that I read, hence the thought.

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/ps-audio-directstream-junior-redcloud-vs-nuwave-dsd-dac-review/
It seems Steve Huff is going nuts regarding PS audio junior DAC/Streamer/Pre Amp.

https://taww.co/post/174486643147/review-ps-audio-directstream-junior-dac

I would love to hear any suggestions you have? Just so you know I have Dali Rubicon 5 towers and Parasound A21 power amp. I am looking for a Pre-Amp + DAC + Streamer combination.
Have a look around here at the various DAC reviews. For example the gear from Topping, from SMLS or if you want more features and high quality the RMEs. Also the MiniDSP Flex might fit, which has built in RoomEQ (DSP).

(FYI. Steve Huff is not very highly regarded here as he provides no facts for his claims which are purely subjective and sighted tests. This and that he benefits financially (as many other YouTubers) makes his recommendations very suspicious as you can also see in this instance where the PS Dac is soo expensive but technically performs so much worse than some of the 100USD Dacs reviewed here).
 
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