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Introduction
15-061-01-1
4826 Sterling Drive, Boulder, CO 80301
Rev A
PH: 720.406.8946 [email protected] www.psaudio.com
Introduction
Owner’s Reference
DirectStream DAC
The PS Audio PerfectWave™ DirectStream Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) is a state-
of-the-art DAC, preamplifi er and media center. DirectStream accepts PCM as well as DSD
Digital Audio data and converts it to high-performance analog audio that can be fed directly
to a power amplifi er or preamplifi er.
DirectStream represents a major advancement in the art of recreating the musical event.
Musical information that may have previously been hidden (or covered up by other DACs)
in digital audio media ranging from CDs to high resolution downloads will be uncovered by
DirectStream.
Subtle musical details and cues such as upper harmonics, decay, reverb and room
refl ections will no longer be masked by the conversion process from digital to analog. Your
music will sound natural and you will be able to rediscover much of what you may have
been missing in your digital audio library with the introduction of DirectStream into your
system.
DirectStream features a unique architecture inside. From its digital inputs to its passive
output stage, DirectStream has been hand written, hand designed and personally voiced
by its principal designer, Ted Smith, along with PS Audio CEO Paul McGowan and
legendary loudspeaker designer and founder of Infi nity Loudspeaker Systems, Arnie Nudell.
DirectStream is based on a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) as its core processor
and no off-the-shelf DAC chips are used in its design.
DirectStream is less sensitive to the vagaries of input source types and their level of jitter
than most DACs made. Remarkably low jitter sensitivity is one of the hallmarks of this
design and is accomplished by not using classic edge transition detection techniques used
on the digital input data. Instead, a proprietary method of extremely fast sample-and-
recognize technology is employed that reduces dependency on cables, jitter and the quality
of the incoming data source.
Once the data from the selected digital audio source has been input to DirectStream it is
upsampled to ten times the standard DSD rate of 2.8MHz before any processing takes
place. After processing by DirectStream all input data is converted to double rate DSD
(5.6MHz) and output through a passively fi ltered analog section consisting primarily of a
high-quality audio output transformer. Elimination of the classic active analog output stage,
with all its diffi culties running at these high frequencies, have been implemented with a high
quality passive audio transformer.
Welcome
DirectStream
Overview
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