PS Audio PerfectWave Debuts DirectStream Junior DAC

Pure DSD Done Right

Introducing DirectStream Junior, a world class DAC based on the architecture of the Stereophile and Absolute Sound’s Product Of The Year, DirectStream. Hand-written, discrete, perfection based conversion that uncovers all the missing information hiding in your digital audio media for all these years. CD’s, downloads, high-resolution PCM or DSD based media are expertly upsampled in the DirectStream Junior to ten times DSD rate and output as pure analog directly into your amplifier or preamplifier. Classic PCM-based DACS, including many of today’s DACS that can also process DSD, tend to cover up some of the subtle musical details buried deep within digital audio music; a problem inherent in their architecture. DirectStream Junior solves this problem by employing a pure DSD single-bit approach for both PCM as well as DSD media. This means that your entire library of music can finally reveal all the music and subtle low level details buried deep within its core – and now, at a more affordable price than its progenitor, DirectStream.

Imagine going to a recording studio and listening to a master tape of any recording made. This is the experience DirectStream Junior affords its owners who enjoy a renewed sense of enjoyment and discovery when listening to everything in their library: CD’s, downloads, DSD.

Wave Revolution

April 2009 seems like a lifetime ago in the fast paced world of digital audio. That was the year PS Audio’s PerfectWave DAC was released. Thousands of PWDs later, in April of 2014, the PWD’s successor DirectStream was launched and the critics raved. Here’s what the critics think of Ted Smith’s FPGA platform.

Digital Product of the Year Stereophile
DAC of the Year TAS
Stereophile Recommended Component Class A+
DAC of the Year Hi-Fi+ 2015
Golden Ear Award, TAS 2014, 2015
Stereophile Editors’ Choice 2014
Digital Audio Review Knock Out award
Greatest Bits Award, AudioStream
Blue Moon Award, 6Moons.com
Home Theater Review Best of 2014
Positive Feedback Brutus Award
Audiophilia Star Component
Audio Excellence Award 2015

There Was Only One Problem for PS Audio Owners

The advanced FPGA and pure DSD technology employed in DirectStream was expensive, our most expensive DAC ever made. PerfectWave customers were asked to spend an additional 41% to enjoy the benefits of designer Ted Smith’s seminal effort at redefining the very architecture of digital to analog conversion. And many thousands of customers did.

But not all could afford DirectStream. Many loyal PS customers had to sit on the sidelines, priced out of the market. Within a few months of DirectStream’s launch, work began on a lower cost version code-named “Junior”.

DirectStream Junior

Ted Smith learned much in the 7 years it took him to develop DirectStream. At first blush it seemed a relatively straightforward task to develop a lower cost version by taking costs out of low hanging fruit like the chassis, user interface, and PC boards. But our goals were loftier than that.

Our product directive asked for similar architecture to DirectStream in a PerfectWave-like chassis, with the network Bridge built in and performance not less than 85% of the original. A tall order by any measure.

Retooling the chassis, replacing the touch screen with a less expensive OLED display and manual volume control was relatively straightforward work by PS Engineering. The real challenge fell upon Ted Smith’s shoulders. How do you get 85% of an instrument’s performance with 41% less to spend? The answer turns out to have a number; two years of hard work. The end result is DirectStream Junior.

Who did we build DirectStream Junior for?

Customers who want to uncover what’s been missing in their libraries, but could not manage a DirectStream DAC. At $3,999, DirectStream Jr. (DSJ), with its built in Bridge II, is slightly more than half a similarly outfitted DirectStream (DS). That makes it a a more cost effective DAC than even the original PWD.

No, it is not a DirectStream when it comes to ultimate performance, but DirectStream Junior offers 85% of DirectStream’s performance at a significantly lower price.

Soon DS and DSJ Owners Will Enjoy Pure SACD

And there is another compelling reason for you to step up to DirectStream or DirectStream Junior. SACD raw. In October of this year PS Audio will launch DirectStream Transport (DST). DST will play SACD in raw DSD if connected to either DirectStream or DirectStream Junior through their I²S inputs. For the first time, you will truly appreciate what has been buried on your SACD, DVD-A, and BluRay Audio discs.

DST will stream pure DSD from SACD only with connected FPGA based DirectStream DACs.

Audible Differences

The two instruments have near identical character of sound. Full, rich, warm, never electronic. Both units share the remarkable ability of helping Red Book CDs sound close to high resolution audio, and uncover a wealth of music long buried in home libraries.

Where the two deviate is in terms of spatial accuracy, transparency, separation of instruments, soundstage width and treble accuracy. The best measure of these differences can be expressed in percentage. DirectStream Junior provides 85% of DirectStream’s performance in the aforementioned areas. The differences are not glaring, and auditioned in a vacuum, DirectStream Junior will impress listeners as one of the finest audible experiences they have yet had.

Compared to any other DAC at anywhere near the price, DirectStream Junior stands head and shoulders above the pack.

Firmware Updates

DirectStream Junior operates with the same FPGA architecture as DirectStream, though the firmware is not identical. Differences in the front panel board and output stages between the two instruments requires different code.

DirectStream Junior is upgradeable just as DirectStream is, though they use different storage mechanisms. DirectStream relies on SD card storage, Junior, USB memory sticks for upgrades.

When DirectStream receives another upgrade, as we released between Pikes and Yale, DirectStream Junior will also be updated at the same time to enjoy the same benefits as DirectStream.

Summary

DirectStream took 7 years to design and launch. Its technology of upconverting both PCM and DSD to a pure DSD analog stream has never been copied and sets the standard for all DACs to aspire.

DirectStream Junior enjoys the heritage, design genius of Ted Smith, and the artistry of PS Audio craftsmen at a more affordable price.

Features

Pure 100% single bit DSD based D to A Converter

Most of today’s sophisticated DACs are IC based instruments using off-the-shelf-chips that are Multi-bit Sigma Delta based designs. While these are relatively simple to design and produce, they don’t often give the best results sonically. Because they are one-chip systems compromises are made in their architecture that found in DirectStream Junior’s custom based architecture. DirectStream Junior takes both PCM and DSD, upsamples the data and converts to single-bit DSD and then outputs pure music regardless of input format for the data. The results of this design can be heard in increased musical information presented to the listener at every opportunity.
Passive/active output stage

Most modern DACs use some form of active tube or solid state output stage to amplify, filter and drive the DACs output. DirectStream Junior takes a different approach: passive filtering with high-speed, high current analog buffering. In one of the simplest, elegant and musically correct executions of an output stage, high speed class A video amplifiers are used as the final switch for the single-bit, double DSD output of DirectStream Junior. When you listen to DirectStream you never are accosted by added bright, hard glare in the music as happens with many op-amp based designs. Instead, clean, pure music flows from DirectStream Junior directly to your preamplifier or power amplifier.

Resolution Perfect Volume and Balance Controls

Designer Smith perfected a 100% bit-perfect volume and balance control that’s built into DirectStream Junior, enabling users to control the output level when feeding directly into a power amplifier or preamplifier. That the volume control is completely bit-perfect means there is no loss of resolution for any volume setting, a feature unique amongst the majority of DACS in the world today. The ability to eliminate the preamplifier in the system without any resolution loss is a major benefit to DirectStream Junior’s outstanding musical performance.
Simple, direct signal path with only one master clock

Typical high-end DAC designs use more than one master clock. There are often separate clocks for USB, Audio and others, causing challenges for system designers trying to synchronize the clocks. DirectStream obviates the problem by basing the entire design on one master clock of extraordinary high quality. Used is a low phase noise, low jitter clock designed for DirectStream Junior by Crystek. Using this advanced approach the need for synchronization is eliminated, jitter levels are reduced and music is delivered with a clarity rarely heard.
High immunity to jitter from sources

Sources have always had a major impact on sound quality with DACS. Transports, computers, CD players, cables all make a significant impact on performance into a typical DAC. This problem has been significantly reduced with DirectStream Junior. Now, for perhaps the first time, sources of just about any quality and jitter level sound nearly identical. For example, you can take a cheap $30 DVD or CD player’s digital output, connect with DirectStream Junior and have sound quality unthinkable for such a poor source. Performance levels no longer are as dependent on the quality of source or connections; certainly not to the degree they have been in the past. Yes, cables and sources still make a difference, but with DirectStream Junior that difference is significantly reduced.
Asynchronous high speed USB and Network access

DirectStream Junior can match up to either a computer or a home network. If a network connection is desired, DirectStream Junior comes equipped with our latest network card, Bridge II. Connect to a NAS or computer with ease, and control your music with an iPad, iPhone, or Android device. You can also connect directly to your computer via USB. USB communication, if handled properly, can have every sound quality advantage of a dedicated CD transport or Network Bridge. DirectStream Junior provides a fully synchronous 24 bit 192kHz path for USB based audio, supporting up to 32 bit 192kHz, and single as well as double rate DSD. Using a good quality USB cable between DirectStream Junior and your computer, like a quiet MAC Mini, provides an instant media server that can be controlled through any number of handheld devices like an iPod, iPhone or Android using a 3d party controller program. Your music can be managed by iTunes, Bit Perfect, Pure Music or Ammara for ease of use.
Polarity inversion

A handy feature on DirectStream Junior is the polarity (phase) control. This remote control option allows users to select normal or inverted polarity for every input and for every performance. Sources and music have no standard for absolute polarity, a fact easily demonstrated by switching polarities on the as the music plays. Many Audiophiles mark their discs in polarity and out of polarity and are very careful to select the proper polarity before playing each disc. Some CD players and sources themselves invert polarity so that a disc you believe is inverted actually is correct played on a specific device and incorrect on yet another. To fix this problem you can assign each input on DirectStream Junior to switch to the proper polarity when you activate that input, through the menu system. Activating this control is the same thing as reversing the loudspeaker connections of both loudspeakers (+ to -) at either the amplifier or speakers. All live acoustic music is in absolute polarity but some recordings may accidentally be made inverted and should sound more realistic when you correct their phase with the switch.
Play directly into your power amplifier or preamplifier

DirectStream Junior offers the ability to play directly into either your preamplifier or power amplifier through either its balanced or single ended outputs. You can select the optimum gain setting through DirectStream Junior’s setup menu, or from the remote control, to match your amplifier and loudspeaker’s sensitivity. If you choose to go through a preamplifier, it’s easy to set DirectStream Junior at maximum level (or any level you wish) to match the preamp’s gain. DirectStream Junior’s unique zero-loss volume control maintains full resolution bit-perfect performance at any volume setting from the lowest to the highest levels.
Hear more than you ever imagined from CDs

DirectStream Junior converts everything to DSD, even PCM before delivering the music to your system. This approach, coupled with careful design, low jitter and a simple and direct signal path has the benefit of uncovering details buried in the music you may not have realized are even there. CDs come alive with subtle details that were never apparent with your older DAC; details you never knew even existed. CDs sound more like high resolution audio than you imagined, closing the gap between higher resolution PCM and DSD copies. No longer do you need to consider replacing your CD library because once you hear what’s truly on your discs, you may not need to upgrade to a higher resolution copy at all. Yes, it is that obvious and significant.

Back Story

DirectStream is the culmination of one man’s quest for perfection, coupled with one company’s search for the same. Principal designer Ted Smith put more than seven years of work into designing what turned out to be one of the most highly acclaimed Digital To Analog Converters yet made.

DirectStream doesn’t fit into every budget and, following its launch, an intense design effort was formed to explore how a lower cost version of the unit’s FPGA based architecture could be realized.

The first steps in Junior’s design process involved reducing the manufacturing costs of the PerfectWave chassis. DirectStream’s PerfectWave chassis is assembled from a combination of castings, extrusions, machined parts, laser cut plates, and finished with a hand painted and polished piano black top cover. Add a touch screen to the many machined chassis parts, and the design group’s first decisions were fairly straightforward. DirectStream’s touch screen was replaced by a lower cost OLED display and haptic feedback volume control. Instead of multiple piece assemblies, Junior’s chassis is constructed out of aluminum extrusions that are less complicated to assemble. Instead of a hand-painted and polished HDF top cover, as found on DirectStream, Junior sports a beautiful gloss black Plexiglas cover that looks nearly identical to DirectStream’s, mounted to a metal substrate.

Our core design requirement was to employ the identical engine of DirectStream into Junior. Both DirectStream and Junior are based on the same Spartan 6 FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) and the same basic operating system developed over many years by designer Smith. Where the two differ is in the PCB, power supply and output stages. DirectStream uses multiple printed circuit boards: a separate digital, analog and Bridge/power supply board, where Junior has everything on one PCB. DirectStream has several power transformers and multiple regulators, Junior relies on one power transformer and the same number of voltage regulators. The output stage of DirectStream incorporates high-speed, high-current analog video amplifiers driving a specially designed audio output transformer, while Junior uses similar, passively filtered amplifiers driving the output directly, without an audio output transformer.

Two years of work with PS Engineering, hundreds of hours in the listening room by designer Smith, PS Audio CEO Paul McGowan, and Arnie Nudell (founder of Infinity Loudspeakers), coupled with many more hours of tweaking, tuning and care, resulted in DirectStream Junior exceeding our best expectations.

DirectStream Junior is one of the finest audio instrument in the world today. That it includes a built-in Bridge II and is far more affordable than its progenitor, DirectStream, turns out to be a source of pride for the entire engineering team.

Build

DirectStream Junior is built in the United States by hand. Local manufacturers use sophisticated PCB building machines to populate and test the multi-layer board used in DirectStream Junior. It takes a number of companies and a lot of skill and equipment to build something this elegant and affordable. From high tech x-ray technology to place the FPGA IC on the board, to automated pick and place machines adding parts in just the right spots, DirectStream Junior’s circuitry is built, tested and delivered to our Boulder Colorado facility by handpicked US vendors. The chassis of DirectStream is a metal sculpture that is by far the best we’ve ever built. A combination of aluminum and steel, DirectStream weighs in at 20 pounds of elegance and beauty. There is a measure of pride of workmanship that goes into every one of these PerfectWave products and it shows from the moment you open the unit up and plug it in.

This is one gorgeous piece of equipment and just the beginning of the most beautiful natural sounding audio equipment you have ever had the privilege to own.

Globally recognized, locally handcrafted.

Specifications

Physical

Unit Weight: 18 lbs [8.1 kg]
Unit Dimensions: 14” x 17” x 2.75” [ 36cm x 43cm x 6.98cm]
Shipping Weight: 27 lbs [12.25 kg]
Shipping Dimensions: 20.5”x 24” x 10” [52cm x 61cm x 25cm]

Power requirements

Input Power: Model specific 100VAC, 120VAC, or 230VAC 50 or 60Hz
Power Consumption: 30W

Digtial audio inputs: I²S, Coax, XLR Balanced, TOSLINK, USB, Ethernet
Sample Rates: I²S,S/PDIF, and USB — 44.1kHz to 352.8kHz 16bit, 24bit, DSD 64, DSD 128,TOSLINK – 44.1kHz to 96kHz 16bit, 24bit

Analog Audio Output

Connector: RCA/XLR Unbalanced /Balanced (X2)
Output level, low: 1.41 Vrms(+5BV)/3.15
Output level high, maximum: 2.81 Vrms (+8dBV)/5.3 Vrms (+12dBV)
Output Impedance: 100Ω/200Ω
Frequency Response: 20-20KHz +/- 0.25dB
THD+N @ 1KHz (full scale): <0.03%
Output Stage: Active high current, high speed analog amps producing double rate DSD.

Data Handling

Format: PCM or DSD
Sample rate (PCM): 44.1kHz, 48.0kHz, 88.2kHz, 96.0kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz, 352.8kHz
Word length (PCM): 16b, 18b, 20b, 24b
Data rate (DSD): Standard (2.8MHz) or Double (5.6MHz) DoP on all inputs as well as raw DSD on I²S inputs
Input jitter reduction: Effectively 100%, residual immeasurable. No input PLLs, FLLs.
Input Processing: 170MHz
Signal Processing: 50MHz
Synchronous Upsampling, all inputs: 28.224MHz
Digital Processing S/N ratio: >146 dB
Digital Volume Control: Zero loss of precision
Analog Conversion method: Delta Sigma (DSD) Single-bit double rate

I²S Digital Input

Connector: HDMI
Format: PCM or DSD. DoP on all inputs as well as raw DSD on I²S inputs

USB Digital Input

Connector: USB “B” Type
Format: PCM or DoP v1.1 (DSD over PCM)
Transfer mode: Asynchronous

Source: PS Audio