Beta Tester’s Impressions of the New PerfectWave SACD Transport

“The secret to why the PST sounds so much better than any player or transport on the market today lies in its AirGap interface that galvanically isolates the digital output stage from the internal power supplies and transport mechanism.” [Emphasis added]

Caveat emptor.

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I admit being bit cautious in getting new PST after my Dmp experience.
That said this player is amazing.depth,clairty and air around around instrument rivals best I have heard.Sound stage is jaw dropping.
Best sound I have heard thru my TSW moded Apogee diva speaks…Red book playback very big and pleasant surprise sound thru this player seems as good or better than my ripped playback. Ps audio is on to something here

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I do wonder if Paul compared the new device to a dCS Rossini or Vivaldi transport/DAC.

When someone says better than any [CD player, cat food, soap powder, etc.] on the market today, here in the UK such talk is called 8 out of 10 cats, after a famous marketing slogan for, you guessed it, cat food. These sorts of things are taken as pure marketing, however long the back-story, and reached the level of public consciousness that open of the most popular shows on TV, now in series 22, is called “8 Out of 10 Cats” a true or false type comedy panel show.

Is this an international phenomenon?

If someone is buying a SACD transport, they are going to be locked into the brand of their DAC due to compatibility issues, unless they buy one of the transport/DAC’s available from other brands. So I doubt many people will be making comparisons. The effectiveness of a high-speed optical bridge (is that what the AirGap is?) will more likely become apparent when it is used in more mainstream components, such as a streamer or DAC.

The dCS Bridge is considered by many to be the state of the art streamer not least due to it’s incredibly low noise level. I was reading Darko making a good point that external fixes for noise and isolation are just plasters on a wound, the issue has to dealt with internally by the component. For that reason many owners of Devialet Expert, that has an extremely good internal streamer that in Roon-ready and can be fed by ethernet, usb or optical, prefer to use a dCS bridge and feed the Expert with the ultra-clean source by AES/EBU.

When I was demoing speakers recently at my dealer, which I bought, they were set up with the same Expert device I own, but I was conscious that the data (Qobuz and my files on a usb stick) was being fed through a dCS Bridge rather than my own Innuos server, causing it to sound better. I feel a sort of inevitability about the fact that sooner or later I’ll be buying one.

The dCS is on my lusting after/wish list. Just waiting for a rightly priced used one to pop up somewhere so I can give it a spin.

Cheers.

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[One came up last week for £2,800, against £4,200 new these days. If I hadn’t got the quote for our new kitchen I’d be listening to it now!

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:joy::man_facepalming:

Steven - you are Better than any PS Audio Critic on the PS Audio Forums Market Today!

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I have no interest in transports, but it will be very interesting to see how the Octave server measures up against the competition, which for me is basically the dCS Bridge. Forget DSD, low noise makes a good 16/44 file sound fantastic.

I have an 8tb SSD QNAP server sitting here largely unused (it’s for business and 95% empty), an Innuos plugged into a conditioner and a fancy ethernet switch. The dCS Bridge just plugs in the wall, takes data from anywhere and sends an ultra-clean stream to your DAC. The QNAP could host the Roon Core. It’s a very tempting proposition!

Gosh🤔

Someone needs to hand out the cold, wet blankets.

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But the dCS Bridge should be of no interest as it does not have any on-board memory. If 1TB is insufficient for the Octave player/server, no memory at all should be a deal breaker - and the dCS intermediately rejected outright. :grin:

And this is a thread for the new transport, not a thread about streamers, players, servers. Odd how a dCS streamer/player was interjected . . .

The dCS Rossini DAC & Transoort cost $48k in the US. I would assume Paul did not compare the $12.5k PDD and PDT with the dCS units based on the $35.5k price difference.

Paul writes great marketing copy! When he states the BHKs are the best sounding amps or the PDT is the best sounding transport, it should be partly taken in context as such.

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Except that context (or limit to the claim) was not provided by Paul.:wink:

All good though - typical hyperbole.

I think of anything written by any enthusiast, including by Paul, as well-intended hyperbole.

It is simply a part of the hobby.

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There is no reason to compare anything with so much difference in price point anyway. Comparing a Ford Focus to a Koenigsegg proves nothing even though they both have an engine, 4 tires and a radio.

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Paul raised the point that the fundamental issue is the AirGap, and he’s said elsewhere its used in the Octave and the super-DAC. Seeing streaming is a vastly more popular format than CD, let alone SACD, performance in s streamer will be more relevant.

I’ve said several times that a streamer does not have storage and a server is by definition a storage device and should therefore have the option of effectively unlimited storage (i.e. how much the customer wants). I’ve owned both. A streamer with1TB memory is not, in my book, much of a server.

Ignore the 1TB on-board memory of the Octave server and you have a simple player, exactly like the dCS bridge which relies solely on USB sticks, USB drives, or a NAS.

The Octave accesses files on all these storage devices, plus it has on-board memory big enough to hold the library of the vast majority of users.

Thus, the Octave is the better, more versatile choice - in light of your having called out the dCS as “the competition.” :slight_smile:

Now lets get back to the new PerfectWave SACD Transport.

If that the case, it’s also dishonest. I’m an enthusiast, but try to be honest, perhaps a bit too honest for some people’s liking. Did 8 out of 10 cats prefer the SACD transport over the Marantz SA-12?

I first mentioned dCS in the context of its Vivaldi and Rossini transports, the best digital sources I have ever heard, and whether Paul’s claim took those into account.

If the SACD transport and DSD DAC are better than the Vivaldi, as Paul claims, I would probably go out and buy them, as they are about a quarter of the price of the dCS kit that is beyond my means.

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He So (as you know) has posited at one time or another that everything he has ever done is More Magical at a Fraction of the Price, than Any Other Thing Currently in Existence. What I don’t get is that you seem unable to grasp this Basic Truth. :man_shrugging:t2:

And I have forgotten why we are worried about the price of things we are never going to buy?