Network Audio Playback
®
4826 Sterling Drive, Boulder, CO 80301
PH: 720.406.8946 | [email protected] | www.psaudio.com
15-042-21-1 Rev A
Instruction i
©2010 PS Audio International Inc. All rights reserved.
Building the Network
You’ll need a Network for all the data to communicate back
and forth. This is the central nervous system of the Bridge. The
Network is used to transfer data from storage to the Bridge and
out to the Internet to get nice things like Album art.
If you plan on using an iDevice (iPhone, iTouch, iPad) to control
the system you’ll need to have wireless access on the Network.
In order to display album artwork and provide detailed artist
information a connection to the Internet is required.
Understanding the Controller
The controller communicates via the network to discover
available Servers and Players. The Controller accesses the
available music on the Server and enables the user to play the
music through a player.
In the PerfectWave System the Bridge operates on DLNA and
UPnP standards. This is an open standard and allows the
Bridge to be controlled by any DLNA/UPnP Controller. PS
Audio suggest the tagNplay controller application for use with
the Bridge.
tagNplay
tagNplay is a DLNA/UPnP application that has been
developed by PS Audio for Apple iDevices to provide
powerful, yet simple and fun use, interface between the
Bridge and their network content. The tagNplay application
is available through psaudio.com or from iTunes.
Preparing the iDevice
If you use an iDevice as a controller, make sure the iDevice
can talk to the wireless router. There may be a password the
router wants before it can let the iDevice talk to the router.
Make sure this is in the iDevice so whenever the iDevice
gets into range of the router it ‘talks’ to the router. Once the
router password is set into the iDevice you don’t have to
enter the password every time you start your music session,
but you do have to set it up for the first time. You may have
to manually go to the ‘settings’ button on the iDevice to tell
it to select the router that has the Bridge and your server
on it. If you have been using another wireless network you
may need to go into the settings on your iDevice and tell it to
forget the old network.
Install tagNplay
Now that the iDevice is working on the same Network as the
Bridge we can install ‘tagNplay’ on the iDevice. This can be
done by accessing the App store via the iDevice or through
iTunes.
Understanding the Server
A network audio system has the advantage of offering a big
choice: do you want a computer involved or not? It is certainly
possible to eliminate the computer entirely in a network audio
setup like PS Audio’s PerfectWave system now, or anytime in
the future.
The first thing you need to think about when considering the
Server options is where you’re going to store your music: inside
or outside your computer or even if a computer is involved.
Storing inside your computer is a reasonable option for small
to medium music collections (2800 albums or less) as long as
you make sure you use some type of external portable storage
to back up the library and as long as you don’t mind having the
computer on all the time.
Storing outside your computer with a portable storage device is
best for medium to large libraries (2800 albums or more), as it
can easily be backed up and allows for unlimited growth of the
library and doesn’t require a computer.
Accessing your stored media, placing it on the home network
and making sure the media is delivered to the chosen player
is the job of the Server software. This software needs to be
installed on your computer, NAS or DLNA/UPnP router and
operates in the background.
There are multiple options for server software available, among
them PS Audio’s own (upcoming) tagNPlay Server, available
for MAC, Windows and Linux near the end of 2010. In the
meantime, we must choose server software and install it on
our computer if we are going to be able to play music over our
network. The exception to this is if you have a DLNA/UPnP
capable NAS or UPnP router to access your music.
The server must be a DLNA/UPnP based server.
The UPnP based server
The PS Audio network based high-resolution audio system has
its roots in something called UPnP or Universal Plug and Play.
UPnP is really nothing more than a way for network equipment
to talk to one another. The beauty of UPnP is everything is
enabled with no setup.
Plug a component onto the network and it announces itself
to any other UPnP device and the two do what’s known as a
handshake and they are instantly communicating together.
The heart of this UPnP based system is the UPnP server. Once
installed on your computer, NAS or router, it will find all your
media, find the PS Audio Bridge, and make itself, as well as all
your media, available to the PS controller on the iPod/iPhone/
iPad.
Until the PS Audio tagNPlay server is ready for downloading,
we recommend you install Twonky if you are using your
computer to store the music. Twonky is available for both
MAC and Windows, is very efficient, and works well for the PS
PerfectWave system. Its downside is a crude user interface, but
once you install Twonky on your computer, setup is easy and it
just works.
Owner’s Reference
Perfect Wave DAC
