Hello forum friends! My name is Doug Goldberg, and I was a member of the design team behind the PS Audio PMG Signature DAC. I thought I’d stop by to provide some context on the design philosophy and development process for this product.
The journey began nearly two years ago when Paul reached out to brainstorm ideas for the next generation of DACs. His guiding principle was clear: preserve the core design ethos of converting all incoming signals to high-rate DSD before analog conversion, while dramatically improving both measured and sonic performance over the legacy product. In short—replace an industry icon and make it significantly better at the same price. No pressure.
What followed was a complete ground-up reengineering of the DirectStream platform. There are no carryover components, firmware, or architectural shortcuts. Every aspect was reconsidered with a focus on achieving an exceptionally low noise floor and very high spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR), enabling the system to reproduce digital signals with extraordinary precision.
Over the course of roughly 18 months, we designed, built, and tested numerous prototypes, refining the architecture until we were fully satisfied with both the electrical performance and the musical results. As always, Paul had the final say on voicing, ensuring the end product met his sonic vision.
I can’t say enough about the PS Audio engineering team—especially Bob Stadther, who carried much of the load on detailed circuit design and PCB layout. The attention to detail is remarkable, particularly in minimizing jitter, crosstalk, and other second-order effects that can subtly but meaningfully affect performance. The result is a true tour de force in mixed-signal design. Even the power supply transformer would be at home in many high-end power amplifiers.
It’s honestly remarkable that we were able to achieve this level of performance without significantly increasing the price.
Here are a few examples that highlight the exceptional electrical performance of the PMG Signature DAC:
Our team is very proud of what we achieved. Exceptionally low noise floor, high spurious free dynamic range and incredible ability to resolve low level detail. I hope you are able to enjoy and take advantage of the effort that was put into this product.
If I read this post first I may just order the DAC instead.
Well, I also have a set of interconnects that will arrive on next Monday so it is in conflict of what I just said. But it is used so it is not new. 