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Questions and Answers 15
Questions And Answers
©2013 PS Audio International Inc. All rights reserved.
®
Owner’s Reference
NuWave Phono Converter
The NuWave Phono Converter is best left plugged in, and on, at all times. The current draw is
negligible and keeping it powered on will make sure the internal components sound their best.
There is no harm in leaving the unit on at all times as the lifespan of the NuWave Phono Converter will
be unaffected by leaving it on.
There are no user serviceable fuses or circuit breakers inside the NuWave Phono Converter.
Placement of the NuWave Phono Converter is not critical but some care should be taken to make sure
whatever it sits on is reasonably steady and hum free. Any equipment with a large power transformer
would be a good source of hum and should be avoided if you’re using the phono preamplifier.
The NPC benefits from break in and takes approximately 24 hours to begin to smooth out and sound
open. An additional week of use puts the finishing touches on this piece of high end audio equipment.
The USB output on the NPC is not designed to feed a D to A converter (DAC) and is only able to feed
a computer. If you have a Mac computer running OSX you should be able to plug the NPC directly into
the USB input and the PC will communicate. If you have a Windows based PC you will need a Windows
driver to communicate with the NPC. The driver can be downloaded free from the PS Audio website.
http://updates.psaudio.com/MarkIIUSBDriver/PSAudio-USBAudio2.0DriverLatest.zip
If your computer does not see the NPC there is a very good chance you did not enable the USB
option on the front panel of the NPC. Go to the NPC user Interface display and make sure USB is
enabled. Enable USB only if you need to connect to the computer as enabling this feature disables
other features of the NPC.
If you see the display going off that is normal. The display on the front panel of the NPC is designed to
auto-shutdown every 24 seconds if it is not being used. This helps protect the longevity of the OLED
screen.
You cannot change the gain for the Aux analog input. The gain of the phono cartridge is set via the
front panel display. This gain setting does not affect the analog auxiliary input, which has a fixed 1:1
input gain.
The blue PS logo light is not a power or standby button. It is only an on indicator and pushing it will
not do anything.
The input sample rate of the A/D Converter is always high, sampling at a constant 352.8kHz (5.6MHz)
in DSD. This rate cannot be changed. From this digital converted stream we derive the PCM signals
by a decimation and reconstruction filter. DSD is native to the NPC.
DSD is sent by a protocol known as DoP (DSD over PCM). The DSD signal purity is never sacrificed
to do this. DoP works by cutting the DSD stream into packets acceptable to the PCM digital audio
Should the unit
be on all the
time?
Fuses?
Break in?
USB doesn’t work
on my DAC?
Why doesn’t my
computer see the
NPC?
Why does the
display turn off?
Change the gain
of the Aux input?
Placement?
The blue PS logo
isn’t a button?
Can I change
the input sample
rate?
What is DoP?
