PS Audio's prototype CD transport pretends to be cool

There's nothing we love more (okay, that's an exaggeration -- but barely) than blatant overkill, and this here prototype from PS Audio fits that description to a T. Granted, we fully expect audiophiles to blindly stand up for this thing -- even though no one outside of the company has a clue just how incredible (or not) the innards actually are -- but here's the skinny. This not-yet-named CD transport reportedly transfers audio tracks from standard CDs onto internal memory for as long as the disc remains inside; apparently, this design "nullifies any jitter" and "other possible audio degradation." Theoretically sound as this logic may be, we can think of quite a few other ways to listen to music stored on flash memory (or similar) without spending $2,000. Who knows though, maybe that wood is incomprehensibly exotic.

[Mark Schenkel @ Oct 19th 2007 5:04AM]

are they forgetting about the "jittering" that could go on during the transfer to internal memory?

[graham @ Oct 19th 2007 5:55AM]

You would not hear that jittering though and data transfer errors could be corrected.

What about an mp3 player and some veneer?

[Richard @ Oct 19th 2007 10:25AM]

Where is all the jittering coming from? Is Michael J. Fox holding the cd player?

[Tristan @ Oct 19th 2007 4:09PM]

Whoa, uncalled for

[PJK @ Oct 19th 2007 5:24AM]

If you'd looked into it a little deeper you'd know the wood comes from Ents, who are not only extinct but never existed in the first place. That's how freakin exotic the wood is!

[L. Cyphre @ Oct 19th 2007 6:22AM]

Audiophiles=stupid

[lapa @ Oct 19th 2007 8:03AM]

+1

[doctorSpoc @ Oct 19th 2007 12:47PM]

+1

[Steve @ Oct 22nd 2007 6:48AM]

Audiophiles=rich+stupid

[rupert @ Oct 19th 2007 6:50AM]

Hey hey hey! I'm an audiophile, and I'd never buy any of PS Audio's products!

Spend the money on speakers, folks.

[Matt @ Oct 19th 2007 8:18AM]

I'm a pizzaphile

[Jaroslav @ Oct 19th 2007 8:43AM]

C'mon! Everybody knows it's the $7000 speaker cables that really make the difference!

http://www.pearcable.com/sub_products_anjou_sc.htm

[Will @ Oct 19th 2007 8:37AM]

OMG, watch out, here comes the RIAA: "You can't make illegal copies of our CD's."

"But it deletes the stored music when the disc is ejected!"

"We'll sue you for every, oh, one second, my Sony-branded MP3-playing cell phone is ringing."

"Dood, this is weak."

[MacGyver @ Oct 19th 2007 8:45AM]

I'm going to make something similar... only mine will always play directly from the CD, but since you can't open the box no one will ever know. I can tell you whatever I want. Hey, it stops playing when you eject the CD, right?

[eunos @ Oct 19th 2007 9:24AM]

Wow, I love how people mock what they don't understand. This is a very sound principal and not a new idea. Everytime you use your computer you are doing the exact same thng. Playback, or reading data off a harddrive or of a memory chip vs a disc. In this case you are removing all the unneccesary, and noisy parts of the computer from the listening experience and providing a simple and stable interface for the user. So, what that you wouldn't pay $2000 for it. Most of you probably thing outback makes good steaks too.

[giislander @ Oct 19th 2007 10:51AM]

Ok, then just buy a computer for 2000, a pretty nice one i might add, and rip all your cd's. That is pretty much doing the same thing as this isnt it? Plus, a computer does a whole lot more than this too.

[craig @ Oct 19th 2007 11:18AM]

"In this case you are removing all the unneccesary, and noisy parts of the computer from the listening experience and providing a simple and stable interface for the user."

No you're not, your just exchanging computer parts and you're not providing any more "simple" or "stable" "interface". The suggestion that the design "nullifies any jitter" and "other possible audio degradation" is also hogwash, as jitter and "audio degradation" come during and after the DAC phase so are uneffected by what amounts to a giant buffer.

This is a total con. It's a CD transport with a 700MB buffer. Those of us with some snap realized this a decade ago.

[doctorSpoc @ Oct 19th 2007 12:33PM]

this is a complete scam.

even a regular CD player that everyone has pretty much does the same thing, except not to the same extent.

data gets read off of the CD, caches probably any where from 1 - 10 seconds (not the whole thing) of it and transfers the data to the D/A converter (Digital to Analogue converter)... this happens very fast, faster than the music gets played the CD player might read the same section 3-4 times and do error correction etc... before anything gets to the D/A converter

hello!! jitter is not something associated with the transfer off of the CD, this is done asynchronously... this is not a turntable or cassette player. jitter is something associated with the clock in the D/A converter.. the timing here is crucial.. how the CD spins is of no matter as long as the data can be read...

the transport basically completely irrelevant... even a $25 transport can get the data off of a CD absolutely perfectly... the transports in computers do this flawlessly every day... each bit in a data file is even more crucial for data than for music. one bit out of place in a data file and the transfer fails. the only difference in the sound from one CD player to the next is the D/A converter.

i have a version of this at home that's way better... it's called a computer hard drive except it currently holds about 600 CDs (not only one) and can be expanded to hold as may as i wish.

Audiophiles are fools.. they try to apply attribute that are important to analogue equipment (turntables and tape drives) to digital equipment... idiots!

[eunos @ Oct 19th 2007 7:44PM]

Doctorspoc, you are absolutely correct. The ps-audi peice is just a rom transport, with a buffer the ouputs the digital, after being reclocked in the buffer. Your excatley right in saying our computer does this. However your computer also generates significate electrical and audible (fans, spinning harddrives, etc.)noise. Something that many consumers don't want in thier listening environments.

Craig - the interface is definetly simpler, and more stable than a pc. There is really no arguing that.

gilslander - your right a computer can do a similar thing, however, not everyone wants a computer in thier living room.

Not to mention not everyone wants to rip thier cd's on to a computer. For example (>4500 cd's at approx 5minutes each =375 hours) it would cost me more in time and or money + harddrives to rip my entire cd collection, than it would to buy the transport.

[Shane @ Oct 19th 2007 9:24AM]

Haven't portable players done this for years? It's called skip protection...

[Shibathedog @ Oct 19th 2007 9:28AM]

Theres a difference between an audiophile and someone who buys into every single stupid little sound gimmick (like those cables)

Why is it so damn big? or does it just look that way in the picture. Even if this does end up helping (sounds like a CD player with a bigass buffer to me :/ don't think it'll help much) theres no way they can't do it in a smaller package.

[Shibathedog @ Oct 19th 2007 9:29AM]

oh and odd shaped too, how is that going to fit with the rest of my equipment?

[laser @ Oct 19th 2007 10:43AM]

Wow, what an exotic idea, where have I heard of this before, streaming audio through a memory buffer...? Oh yeah, the thousands of cheap portable cd players with anti-skip, available at your nearest drugstore for 19.99! Keep up the good work on that prototype though...

[blevay @ Oct 19th 2007 10:45AM]

It wouldn't be blindly standing up for it, it's a sound principle. It's basically working like the cache on your hard drive. Keeps the audio samples coming out of the box at an even pace, causing less distortion when the data stream gets converted into an analog signal. THEN it can go through the other couple-hundred-thousand-dollars worth of stuff.

[craig @ Oct 19th 2007 11:20AM]

You realize, of course, that that's the trivially easy part, right?

[doctorSpoc @ Oct 19th 2007 12:39PM]

except every CD player on earth already does this.. every CD player out there including the cheapest $10 RadioShack CD buffers from 1- 10 second of data before it gets to the D/A converter... please get a clue!

this is complete BS.. jitter in a CD player is in the clock of D/A converter... the transport can be as cheap as you'd like the only thing that matters is the D/A converter.

[blevay @ Oct 19th 2007 1:00PM]

@craig, of course it's trivially easy, otherwise i wouldn't have thought of it!

@spock, they seem to be talking about some other kind of jitter. maybe keeping samples from coming too far away from clock pulses? Also, seems like it could be a more substantial buffer.

[blevay @ Oct 19th 2007 1:04PM]

Also, yes, it does seem like a certain level of BS, but someone's gotta play devil's advocate.

[doctorSpoc @ Oct 19th 2007 1:17PM]

@blevay

it's a straight up scam..

the CD player can read data off of the CD WAAAAYYYY faster than it needs to in order to feed the D/A converter... can read the sample 3-4 times, do error correction, etc, etc... before the next cycle comes up... with a buffer of a few seconds the sample could be read 100s of times.. there is just no way around it this is a straight up scam!

these guys understand that the vast, vast majority of audiophiles don't really understand how a cd player works and imagine it working like a turntable or a tape player works... in these cases the "jitter" of the motor matters.. in a CD player it matters very little because of the buffering of data.

again, the only data that makes it into the music from a CD player is from the D/A converter... anyone tells you different is either a fool or a scam artist.

[doctorSpoc @ Oct 19th 2007 1:23PM]

meant the only **jitter** that makes it into the music from a CD player is from the D/A converter.

[Andrew @ Oct 19th 2007 1:55PM]

As an EE I have designed some DACs as well as built one designed by others which buffers the data and then reads it with a very clean (low jitter) clock. This principle is used in telecommunications equipment (so-called elastic memory), there's nothing exotic about it. It is definitely considerably more complex than your regular DAC and the end result of a well done circuit is very low jitter feeding the D/A chip, meaning less jitter-induced distortion (spurious harmonics). By the way this distortion can be easily measured (all you need is a good soundcard) and clock jitter itself is a very real effect which is taken into account when doing things like digital multiplexing - I have heard people talking about jitter as if it was snake oil. Whether this distortion - which is measurable - is audible, that's a matter of debate but the effect itself is real.

The difference here with this PS device is that if you buffer the entire song (or CD), you could drive your D/A converter with a fixed frequency clock, and design the oscillator to be as simple and clean as it gets. With normal size buffers that holds a few hundred samples (or a few seconds), you need your clock to be capable of slightly varying its frequency so that over longer period of time it matches the input clock (which is dirty) that's filling the buffer - otherwise you'd get skipped or repeated samples every now and then. A well designed device will have a feedback look which will only let sub-Hertz frequencies from the integrator - i.e. the long term variations of the average of the input clock frequency - from influencing the output clock. This low pass filter is what blocks the jitter. In their system there is no need for that, as the entire song or CD is buffered so you only need a simple, clean clock to read it.

In practice there should be no difference worth mentioning between two methods. I'd say it's definitely an overkill but with memory prices this low, it may not matter. But the limited buffer is way more practical as it can be used with any digital input while theirs can only be used with a CD (you can't buffer a song over digital input as you have no way of knowing where it stops and ends, plus it's realtime).

[minimalist @ Oct 19th 2007 10:56AM]

Haven't portable players done this for years? It's called skip protection...

Hey, it took a many audiophiles a decade to deem the CD as acceptable (2000 dollar ones of course all gussied up with exotic tubes and analog processors to fix that "cold, digital sound"). A lot of these guys have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future. Audiophile culture can be such a weird mix of pseudo-scientific voodoo and plain old elitism.

Rupert is right however, spend the money on your speakers and everything sounds ten times better.... even stuff I stream over airport expresses from iTunes. Its not the components, or the cables, or the type of mp3 player you use, etc. Its what you listen to the content with that makes the biggest impact. Headphones and speakers.

[Jesse S @ Oct 19th 2007 11:05AM]

I'm an audiophile, and I scoff at this snake oil.

[Eric @ Oct 19th 2007 11:36AM]

Stereophile has measured the jitter of various CD players, and it is measurably different from CD player to CD player. CD players (even cheap ones) do sound very different from each other, I can't say if jitter is the cause or not though.

Probably you get some pretty good parts in this device ($100 capacitors and the like) - it is not just a memory buffer you are paying for.

And there are $4000 speaker cables that do make a big difference in the sound - Nordost Valhallas. Most anti-audiophile people have never listened to an audiophile system, it is like hearing how Porches are no good at a Kia club.

[JohnPhilips @ Oct 19th 2007 12:32PM]

Eric: I know that if I was playing music from a CD, that I wouldn't use $7000 analog cables.
I'd go for $20-$50 TOSLINK or SP/DIF cables that would deliver the DIGITAL DATA from the CDs to my speaker system.

[doctorSpoc @ Oct 19th 2007 12:45PM]

@Eric

Audiophiles really don't understand the technology... Eric the jitter is not from the transport. data is take off of the disc asynchronously and buffered... the difference in jitter of CD players is from the clocks in the D/A converters. better CD players usually have better D/A converters that's where the jitter is introduced on CD players not from the transport... this is not a turntable or tape player, this is a CD player.

if you don't know how the technology works then you can be scammed with stuff like this really easily.. the transport doesn't matter only the D/A converter

[minimalist @ Oct 19th 2007 1:01PM]

"And there are $4000 speaker cables that do make a big difference in the sound - Nordost Valhallas. Most anti-audiophile people have never listened to an audiophile system, it is like hearing how Porches are no good at a Kia club."

Well a Porch also doesn't cost 100 times what a Kia costs either, Eric. I think 4000 dollar speaker cables are providing diminishing returns for the investment. Sometimes good is good enough.

But really its not so much about the cost as it is about culture. I doubt most people would give a flip if audiophiles dropped 4000 dollars on their speaker cables or not... if these audiophiles could just do so without being so contemptuous and snotty about lesser systems (and the intelligence of people who find them perfectly satisfactory). If more audiophiles would curtail their open disdain for the unwashed masses with their mp3 players, they probably wouldn't catch so much flack.

I love my NAD amp... but I hate going into many high end audio stores precisely for this reason.

[Jesse S @ Oct 19th 2007 2:50PM]

Eric, you are a dumb, blind, sheep audiophile like the most of them. This isn't even a CD player.

Lamp cord is going to sound the same as your silver-plated copper.

[alex @ Oct 19th 2007 11:54AM]

Audiophiles = Audiofools

But I guess some people get off paying lots of money for stereo equipment and pretending hear subtle differences because of something like this or speaker wires etc... I guess it feeds the ego.
But in the the old saying still is rings true a "A fool and his money are easily parted"

[Jesse S @ Oct 19th 2007 2:50PM]

Don't lump us all in with the idiots that buy into this crap.

[Eric @ Oct 19th 2007 1:56PM]

JohnPhillips - the toslink cable does not deliver the data to your speakers, but to your D/A converter. Toslink is also rumored to sound worse than coaxial digital connections - why, I have no idea.

DoctorSpoc - It makes sense to me to buffer the data in between the transport and the D/A converter to avoid jitter, or have a phase-lock loop in your D/A converter. Without one of these two things, your D/A converter will still be affected by the jitter of the bits out of the transport.

minimalist - I think that both sides need to be more understanding. Audiophiles putting down MP3 players are jerks, and people who say "Audiofool" and tell everybody how things sound (when they don't listen to the systems in question, or even know very much about audio) are also jerks.

I doubt that this unit is a rip-off, just based on parts cost alone. High end audio is a low-volume business, and you need to mark up a unit by 800% over parts cost to make a profit (this will give about a 40% margin to 3 layers of business - manufacturer, wholsaler, retailer). PS audio sells direct, so I am guessing that you probably have over $800 worth of parts in that box.

[doctorSpoc @ Oct 19th 2007 2:11PM]

@Eric - fortunately every CD player on the planet already does this... it's a scam... get a clue.

also... as for parts cost... if i have a 10 million dollar solid gold toilet seat on my shitter... does that necessarily improve my experience? what you are saying doesn't make sense... they can put all the expensive parts in the world in that thing, if it doesn't contribute to improving the sound of the unit it's a rip-off..

you, like most audiophiles i've encountered just don't understand what is relevant in digital audio... if you think this transport, any transport will in any way improve the sound coming out of you system you absolutely don't understand digital audio... at all.

[Eric @ Oct 19th 2007 2:26PM]

A single capacitor change in your D/A can dramatically change the sound. Parts quality absolutely makes a huge difference in sound quality.

[Jesse S @ Oct 19th 2007 3:01PM]

Eric, boutique parts like black gates are pure FRAUD. Nordost is snake oil. Virtual Dynamics perpetuates fraud, too.

And Machina Dynama (or whatever) is a hilarious prank.

[n_shakuras @ Oct 19th 2007 9:48PM]

Well Paul, thanks for setting all us silly regular folk straight. Thanks for the condescending analogy about wine.

[paulmc @ Oct 20th 2007 12:09AM]

Oh, don't take it personally and certainly don't take it to be condescending. it is, after all, supposed to be fun.

I don't mean to be demeaning and apologize if I come across as such - probably just having been at it so long and heard so many people pooh - pooh things they don't really have a lot of experience at makes me a bit jaded I suppose.

Anyway, music is something I believe we can all enjoy at different levels. Discerning tastes are learned experiences developed with time and interest. Just because someone can't discern differences in something doesn't negate those differences nor does it mean it is open to ridicule.

I for one can tell the difference between Boone's Farm and a fine French wine, but that's about it. I probably can't tell the difference between a California wine and a French wine - but there are many that can. I was just trying to make a point that it isn't something to feel bad about.

Enjoy at whatever level you're at and help those who want to progress further.

[Rob @ Oct 30th 2007 3:21AM]

Wow! I didn't realize that being an audiophile had such a negative connotation and was so misunderstood. We're just music lovers! All praise unto Paul for chiming in. I was surfing for reviews on PS Audio amplifier modifications when I ran into this blog. Guilty as charged.
I have a lot of very different hobbies, and every one has the crazy splinter groups and rip-offs; just go to a gun range sometime and talk to a few people. We don't all fall for the "voodoo" items, at least not too often, and most learn from our mistakes. By the way, some cables (and many other things) do make a huge difference, at certain levels and in the right place! Yes, there are diminishing returns, especially in something like High-End Audio, but don't you find that in everything.
Before you criticize too harshly, read through a few audio mags, check out Robert Harley's book The Complete Guide to High-End Audio at the library and go to a true HiFi store with a few of your favorite CDs and really listen to some different systems. If they are rude, go to another store, as they probably aren't worth the skin they are in anyway. You might be suprised and end up a "foolish" audiophile yourself. It's not about the price of your kit, it's all about the smile it puts on your face.