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PS Audio PerfectWave DAC


The Monkey

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Thanks Deepak.

Greg, clubby could be a good word for it, but without that echo-y sound that I sometimes associate with it. I'm not sure where this DAC falls along the hi-end spectrum, but I find it very satisying.

I plan on getting the bridge, provided that they get the ALAC issues sorted.

I think PS Audio is ahead of the curve here. There will always be purist type no nonsense DACs, which is a good thing. But the PWD is the kind of Swiss army knife expandable product that is very useful now with digital music. And they seem to be trying to future proof it.

MOAR KOOL AID PLEASE!

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Try the two with a nice pair of studio monitors in a treated room. You may notice a difference in the resolution, frequency extension as well as tonality/neutrality. (the areas I thought it excelled nicely)

At the very least, why not do your subconscious a favor and adhere to the placebo-affect inherent in listening to the more expensive gear?

BTW, what do you vinyl owners have to say about how the PerfectWave compares to your vinyl rigs?

Oh I can hear differences when I'm doing it not blind: the Bel Canto one sounds better, mostly because I know it has a lower noise floor and better measured response. I did a test with the BelCanto, a Weiss DAC2 and the DEQ2496: I volume matched with a voltmeter everything let it sit on for a couple days and got my wife to switch all the inputs to my source switching box (with identical cables) and therefore single blind. I couldn't hear one farts of a difference between the two as much as I tried with Qualias, HD800s etc through a GS-X when listening to music. If no music was on I could crank the volume enough to tell the noise floor differences.

I am not saying all DACs sound the same but I think that if the DAC is well designed to be transparent with a plain brick wall fliter and the correct phase response etc then it appears to end up at the same place, which it should. That said, non-brick wall filters maybe superior for some things such as old recordings that were downsampled to 16/44.1 through a good old fashioned brick wall. I can just build one of those filters into foobar if I want using the convolver.

Back on the thread topic. Glad the Perfect Waves are sounding good :)

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As I have said previously I really like the PWD. I would say it gets close to equal playing time with the dCS Paganini stack simply because I often feel it is more involving than the dCS which is one of those DACs that knock you out at first but you find yourself not really getting into the music.

I definitely prefer the PWD to all of my other DACs.

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:D

At least they make it in silver.

(FWIW, I really enjoyed auditioning Harbeths for a couple of hours off the PW transport and DAC. Great sound, easy and intuitive to use. What chipses are they using, Dinny?)

I would guess they use wolfson considering that's who wrote the filtering paper on their website

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I was looking around their forums and saw this comment from the CEO:

The Bridge will deliver the same level of performance as the PWT. Indeed, and this is what’s so freaking exciting about what we’re doing.

Interesting.

This Bridge is going to finally come out in March if I read right? I'm halfway curious to see if I can rig a shootout for myself between this beast vs. my Cambridge 840c. This beast would allow me to streamline my entire setup across the boards and I'm lightly considering it at this point. My PC and all my gear are in the same room so all I would do is hard wire this thing right to my router.

Monkey, where did you see this for $2100 new thereabouts?.

I'm grateful for a thread like this because I know Monkey and others will shoot right past the marketing hype and spin and get down to the real facts of the matter up or down. I lurk a lot more than I post but a lot of you regulars by now I know I can count on to cut through the BS. :)

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I was looking around their forums and saw this comment from the CEO:

Interesting.

This Bridge is going to finally come out in March if I read right? I'm halfway curious to see if I can rig a shootout for myself between this beast vs. my Cambridge 840c. This beast would allow me to streamline my entire setup across the boards and I'm lightly considering it at this point. My PC and all my gear are in the same room so all I would do is hard wire this thing right to my router.

Monkey, where did you see this for $2100 new thereabouts?.

I'm grateful for a thread like this because I know Monkey and others will shoot right past the marketing hype and spin and get down to the real facts of the matter up or down. I lurk a lot more than I post but a lot of you regulars by now I know I can count on to cut through the BS. :)

I'm very interested in hearing impressions when the bridge comes out. I really liked the sound of the PWD w/ its transport when I've heard them at several meets (no real extended listen, though) but wouldn't really want to use it this way. If I make a big change in source at this point, I'd be going the server route.

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I was looking around their forums and saw this comment from the CEO:

Interesting.

This Bridge is going to finally come out in March if I read right? I'm halfway curious to see if I can rig a shootout for myself between this beast vs. my Cambridge 840c. This beast would allow me to streamline my entire setup across the boards and I'm lightly considering it at this point. My PC and all my gear are in the same room so all I would do is hard wire this thing right to my router.

Monkey, where did you see this for $2100 new thereabouts?.

I'm grateful for a thread like this because I know Monkey and others will shoot right past the marketing hype and spin and get down to the real facts of the matter up or down. I lurk a lot more than I post but a lot of you regulars by now I know I can count on to cut through the BS. :)

I got the DAC from Ronald Buffington from Liquid HiFi. He has been running good deals on this and other equipment from time to time. I believe he's a member here. Nice guy, no hard sell, great communication.

And the bridge is fascinating to me, too. That's one of the reasons I got the PWD. But I think March sounds a little ambitious (I think they've had several delays already). Frankly, I think there are going to be audiophiles who don't like the premise of this DAC as much as they might not like the sound. Accordingly, there may be some deals to be found on the 'gon. However, I figured I would have this for a while, so I actually wanted to go through an authorized dealer should any problems arise.

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