Stereophile is a kind of weird magazine in these “digital days”. They don’t really advertise their new issue in their web page (at least I haven’t found). I didn’t find anywhere where you can buy their latest issue in digital format. I guess they like their printed copy like some like their cardboard vinyl covers (no offence)
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Well I subscribed to one service for 12 issues (really cheap) and hope to get september issue soon…
Sorry for offtopic.
I read the review and I would summarize it as “like it a lot, but did not fall head over heels in love with it”. Contrast this with other reviewers touting the DS as a giant killer, and yet others dissing it as worse than the PWD, one has to conclude that reviews are complete and utterly useless for a serious audiophile as the basis of a buying decision (of course, they are still immensely valuable to manufacturers as marketing tools).
To me reviews have some value in drawing up shortlists of “gear I’d like to hear myself if I can get my hands on it”. Personal audition is of the essence, and I also believe personal audition in direct comparison with incumbent components or other contenders is mandatory.
Without having read the review (I haven’t gotten either this or my TAS issue yet!), I’d have to say if it wasn’t invented in 1952, or an homage design of something built in 1952, Dudley probably wouldn’t rate it as all that great.
With only some of the kidding aside - and while I do respect Art for the things that are in his wheelhouse - I’m not so sure he is the reviewer I’d pick as being “in the groove” with this part of the hobby. Just my opinion.
adriaan said Is it clear from the Stereophile article why the reviewer didn't 'fell in love' with the DirectStream?If I recall correctly he said that while there was a lot to like/love about the DS, he thought it was a bit smooth, resulting in lack of "attack" and dynamics. Again, in my opinion a lot of this nuance is all splitting hairs (after all, when you review a piece you have to write about something you hear), and a reviewer with a taste for smoothness could have declared the DS the best thing since sliced bread based on the same performance attribute.
edorr said I read the review and I would summarize it as "like it a lot, but did not fall head over heels in love with it". Contrast this with other reviewers touting the DS as a giant killer, and yet others dissing it as worse than the PWD, one has to conclude that reviews are complete and utterly useless for a serious audiophile as the basis of a buying decision (of course, they are still immensely valuable to manufacturers as marketing tools).edorr, what did JA have to say about the DS measurements?
Don’t know. I don’t read nor care about measurements. I’m strictly a believer in the voodoo school of audio 
He said in some ways it measured superbly and in other not so much. A bit of additive distortion in the low and and only 17 bit resolution nut also very linear in the midband.
I took the review as very, very positive. Especially once he got the new firmware.
Nearly all reviews are positive. A piece is either classified as a “mishit” (happens occasionally), positive (a “contender”), or a “game changer” in its price class. I would place this review solidly in the “contender” category (others have clearly called the DS a game changer). He did not unequivocally call it better than the $5K Luxman he compared it with, the way I read the review.
crabby said He said in some ways it measured superbly and in other not so much. A bit of additive distortion in the low and and only 17 bit resolution nut also very linear in the midband.
I took the review as very, very positive. Especially once he got the new firmware.Thanks crabby!
edorr said . . . one has to conclude that reviews are complete and utterly useless for a serious audiophile as the basis of a buying decision (of course, they are still immensely valuable to manufacturers as marketing tools).I personally know a number of engineers and marketing/support people at high end manufactures. They labeled magazine reviews useless long before consumers diid. They pay no attention to the big mags/online sites and do not submit their equipment for review.
It remains an interesting business.
+1, although I do value at least being able to see the measurements. They may not be measuring the right things in all cases, but at least there’s some bit of objective information along with the reviews (which I enjoy but don’t put a huge stock into).
Oh BTW, so what do I see when I get home today? Both Stereophile AND TAS waiting in my mailbox.
I agree that I didn’t think Stereophile gave it the rave review that Absolute Sound did this month. Oh well. Reviewers see things differently and have their own biases and so on. However, like others have said I don’t buy anything based on a reviewers opinion. That is a small part of the equation. Also, way too much strange stuff with reviewers getting sweetheart deals on expensive items etc to cloud the picture for me of true impartiality (not to mention reviews in exchange for advertising dollars). In this case hearing the DAC in comparison to others is the way to go. This DAC is superb and I have been listening to it and breaking it in for two months. It gets better every day. It does not sound like it did when it came out of the box. And yes the upgrade did help also. We can discuss the reviews but they are no substitute for getting the DAC and listening to it in your system. That is one of the things I love about PS audio is that they let you audition items at home and they can be returned if you don’t like them. I find this DAC to be better than any others I have heard in my system and that is what matters most to me. When I get a well recorded source, especially DSD, this thing practically comes alive and sings to me. It is so real it is startling sometimes! This is there first time that has happened to me with digital audio.
+1 again. But I just read the review and looked at the measurements. Some of what I read in the review and saw in the measurements tugged at me as possibly being related to those small areas of reproduction that a few of us mentioned in the First Impressions thread.
Ted, I have to ask for your thoughts on the undithered sinewave, apparent inability to resolve a 24 bit tone, and the high noise floor shown in the Jitter spectrum. Does any of this concern you?
I had the same feeling reading this review as I did reading Dudley’s review of the Wilson Sophia 3’s, which I also own. Then, he started out saying he hadn’t been a fan of Wilsons but in the end gave them a pretty good review, although he almost seemed reluctant to do so. They also put that review on the cover. His final statement on the DS was: “But today, for those who’ve waited for a computer-friendly DAC that offers, with every type of music file, the best musicality of which DSD is capable, the PerfectWave DirectStream may be in a class by itself.” That seemed much more enthusiastic than much of the review, at least until he got to the short section on the new firmware, in which he softened much of his prior criticism. I assume time considerations prevented a more thorough rewrite to take account of the firmware update, but readers would have been better served if they had done so. Or maybe it’s just his writing style.
I had a bit of a deja vu feeling reading the measurements. I believe Ted has addressed similar concerns about the effective resolution following a prior review (my memory currently is refusing to tell me which one it was).
I’m glad JA found that weird distortion of the lowest few bits. I indeed did have an outright bug in the FPGA. It’s not serious enough to do a separate release of the FPGA for, but the fix will be in the next FPGA release when ever that is.
I was expecting the noise floor measurement, but I’d rather JA used a different word than resolution to describe it. Clearly the DAC is resolving signals below the noise floor…
As JA said the center spike in the jitter test is quite narrow and also as he says his normal way of measuring jitter isn’t as revealing in the presence of this much noise. But even so that jitter test doesn’t make sense for this input topology: very little of the output jitter in the DS comes from the jitter in the input waveforms. An extremely fast and accurate scope doing eye patterns would probably be needed to get a good measurement of the jitter.
Like the Stereophile measurements of the Playback Designs DAC these measurements don’t seem to capture the essence of DSD DACs. Doing a DSD dac this way gets a very accurate output (linearity, fidelity to the input waveform) but not so precise of an output (bits of precision.)
Just pulled my copy out of the mail box…!
Will not read this thread until I have read the article…spoiler alert on the cover though: “DSD Done Right”…
Congratulations!
[Whoops! Wrong Mag/Cover…I just finished reading the TAS review. The above quote is on the cover. I have not seen the 'Phile review yet. If the TAS review is not a rave, I guess I have never read a review that was.]
Thank you Ted!
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(edit)
As Columbo would say, “Just one more thing.” Even given the nature of DSD and how some of the standard measurements may not be adequate, I’m still curious about the sinewave. Shouldn’t the sinewave look like a sinewave regardless of the conversion method? That’s supposedly a representation of the analog signal after D/A conversion.
Paul:
Which month has DS DAC on the cover? (My digital subscription is up to date through August 2014.)
Regards.
tony22 said As Columbo would say, "Just one more thing." Even given the nature of DSD and how some of the standard measurements may not be adequate, I'm still curious about the sinewave. Shouldn't the sinewave look like a sinewave regardless of the conversion method? That's supposedly a representation of the analog signal after D/A conversion.Well that's what a bug will do... Some coefficients in the upsampler were truncated, that caused very weird corruptions of the last bit or two (out of 24) in some circumstances. Or am I misunderstanding your question?
Nope, just needed a bit more help putting it all together.