I’ve been in the “hobby” for many decades, but I do not post much. I just enjoy listening to music through my amazing system and room. Plus, to be honest, humans on audio forums are disappointing. Not all, but the idiots just ruin it. However…. I felt that I needed to do my part to contribute to the community, so here’s my experience with the PMG Preamp and the 512 DAC.
I received the preamp first. When I first hooked the preamp up and started to run a signal through it, I was amazed at the additional information that I was hearing in recordings that I am very familiar with, but the preamp sounded crazy, wonky! The bass was wild and the high frequency was so elevated! I thought, holy cow, I must have something hooked up incorrectly. I had the preamp hooked up correctly. Long story short… it took two weeks for that preamp to break in. Seriously, right at two weeks of non stop signal (music) through the preamp, the preamp was sounding damn good. Prior to that, I thought I was going to be sending the preamp back.
This happen with the 512 DAC, as well. Right at about day 14 of non stop signal through the DAC, it was finally sounding damn good.
That’s it, I’m not going to write some crazy long post about the journey. My main objective in writing this post was to just let people know that if they are considering buying either of these pieces, that you need to make sure and give these units a good long time to break in. I am VERY happy with the PMG preamp and the 512 DAC. They are not going back. Thank you PS Audio.
Thank you for this note and for the advice and notice about burn in. How true!!!
For those that don’t yet know, we’ve had our engineering team working to build a new 100 hour burn in system for every piece of PMG kit that gets built. PMG 800s are already on burn in and within the month all PMGs will be burned in.
It’s been quite a project as you can imagine, involving lots of racks and plugs and sources and timers oh my! But we’re nearly done. I’ll try and shoot some flicks for you all to see.
Message received about the burn-in! I have the 512 DAC and it’s connected directly to my PMG amplifiers. I know that the pluses and minuses of adding a PMG preamp into this configuration has been discussed in the PS Audio forums previously but just wondering if you have any additional comments based on your own personal experience. I’m considering making the PMG preamp my next purchase but am not totally convinced it can add anything to my (already great sounding) system. My sources are all digital – CD, SACD, streaming.
You probably don’t want to hear my super biased opinion but, what the heck. I routinely make the comparison for folks of the 512’s analog volume control feeding the PMG 800s directly vs. the PMG Preamp in the mix and the difference between the two is hardly subtle and noticed by every single person who’s had a chance to compare.
Seriously, if you can manage, grab one and give it a try for a few weeks to decide.
Not to worry, I’m always ready for your opinion, Paul. And sometimes I think what I need is basically some reassurance that I’m going the right direction. But there is the intuitive rule “simpler is better”, so I approach cautiously.
Salesman: “This vacuum will cut your cleaning time in half.”
Me: “Great, gimme two of ’em!”
Hah! Now that’s good. It’s up there with can 9 women have a baby in one month. Love it.
Yeah, I struggled with this for so long until I was grabbed by the collar and dragged into the truth, kicking and screaming. It makes little sense because in our field less is more. Right?
But, sometimes, like when you go into a fun house and nothing makes any sense you have to go with the flow and for sure, the PMG Pre just makes it better.
Wow! My first post and The Big Cheese responds! Love it. Paul, I love your style. I get so sick of all of the negative comments about you and PS Audio. Wasn’t it Confucius that said, “Let the pussies that sit on the sidelines and never do anything, or take any chances, cast the stones, for they are the only ones with a perfect record”.
Bruce - I know that there is an upsurge in DAC’s that are being promoting as having a good enough analog output/volume control to send the signal directly from the DAC to the amp. Personally, my experiences have proven that a preamp between the DAC and amps has always sounded better than the DAC run directly to the amps. I could site some examples but I’ll save everyone the details.
Regarding the PMG preamp… the preamp is damn good. I’ve had a lot of preamps through my systems over the many decades. A few of the preamps had a profound positive affect and others were neutral (did nothing to change, or improve the signal). The PMG really blew up my system - in a good way! It would squarely be categorized under the “had a profound positive affect” on my system. For one, the PMG Pre is providing so much more information. This is something one might expect from a DAC, but not necessarily from the preamp. All of the additional information revealed by the PMG pre really blew my mind. Everything is so much more… grandiose, comes to mind. The bass was massively improved, the detail, the separation of all of the instruments, etc., etc… I will spare you all of the typical reviewer nomenclature. Oh! and the dead silent background - profound. The PMG preamp is a very worthwhile purchase. And, of course, with PS Audio’s trial program - try it for yourself and you decide. I can guarantee you that you will not be sending it back.
Of course, the 512 is amazing too. I expected the 512 to be good, but the PMG preamp blew my mind at what it brought to the party.
Paul and company, keep up the great work. I appreciate it.
Haters hate. Lovers love. Life is short. Listen to music. The planet is good.
What a wonderful note and the “quote” from Confucius cracked me up. Love it!
Are there a bunch of nay sayers out there? I never read the comments if they are on YouTube. I tried a long time ago and they got ugly and stupid and it always boggled my mind. Like, “ok, don’t watch the videos!” I mean if you don’t like a program don’t watch it.
Sheesh.
Anyway, thanks for the kind comments. We’re all after the same thing so maybe we can all take a deep breath and give each other a little space to bang around with opinions that don’t set people on fire.
I haven’t personally heard the Playback Designs $26k DAC, but others have said it sounds amazing without a pre amp. I’m sure it does, but perhaps it just takes a really expensive pre amp to improve its sound quality.
I had the big dog Playback Designs and the Meinter MA3i in my system for an audition. Both were fabulous DACs, BUT both sounded better with a preamp. I had a few audio nuts over to listen to these DACs and everyone in attendance agreed that both of the DACs sounded better with the preamp.
At that time, I had the Sanders Sound preamp on hand. That preamp is basically a rebadge Coda preamp. It’s surprisingly a pretty darn good preamp. The PMG pre replaced that unit. I did not heard the PMG pre together with either of those DACs. I’m sure that it would have been special.
OCD Mikey from 11 Stereo is a dealer for Playback Designs. On his YouTube channel he’s constantly making the point that this DAC doesn’t need a preamp. I often wondered if that was the case or if it was just a good selling point. I’m sure the DAC sounds spectacular without a preamp, but it doesn’t surprise me that a good preamp further improves the sound.
