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  November 2008
And speaking of New York, what a contrast between Manhattan and Boulder! Terri and I traveled to NYC to present the New York Audiophile Society with the first look at the new memory player transport (PWT) and the new Ultralink DAC a few weeks ago. The meeting was hosted at Custom Audio and Video and it was a real treat for me as well. 50 or so people showed up and we spent several hours talking about Hi Fi and playing the system we setup with the PWT and Ultralink. The reaction to the new audio products was very gratifying and we generated lots of interest and many questions. What really surprised me were the number of questions about AC power and the Power Plant Premier regenerator! In fact, we probably spent more time talking about Power Plants than anything else and so I thought perhaps in this newsletter we'd spend a little time going over a few regenerator issues you may not be familiar with; before we delve into new stuff.  As I mentioned, Chicago is next. In fact if you're in the area, I'll be showing the PWT and Ultralink to the Chicago Audio Society tomorrow, Sunday, the 16th of November. The meeting is open to anyone that wants to come. Here's the address: Arlington Heights Historical Society (in the Arlington Room) 110 W. Fremont St. Arlington Heights, IL 60004 (847) 255-1225 Contest winners announced As you may remember, our contest ended at the end of last month and we chose 135 winners. All but 20 of the folks we chose have responded back and we are sending their prizes out to them. The grand prizewinner is Brian Gibson of Richardson Texas. Brian wins a complete AC power solution from us, including a brand new Power Plant Premier, a Soloist, a Duet and all the cables he'll need to connect his system up. Brian wasn't the original pick for grand prize; the name we drew at random never responded to our email notification (bummer). So, our webmaster grabbed a new name and Brian's it! Congratulations Brian. We also gave away three Second place prizes, a Power Plant Premier to William Rollins, Isabel Lazaroo and Chris Howard. Again, congratulations to all our winners and thanks to everyone who entered the contest. We had nearly 3,000 entries but since we gave away so many prizes, your chances of winning were still a healthy 5%. Power Plants I always assume that everyone reading this newsletter understands what a Power Plant Premier is and how  it differs from other products; the PPP (as it is known) has been available since 1997. As I travel around the world demonstrating our technologies I find over and over that assumption is wrong, despite the 11 years of service Power Plants have been providing to people all over the world. So let me not make that mistake again!The Power Plant is an AC regenerator. Unlike a power conditioner, that is designed to filter out some of the noise found on the power line in your home, the PPP doesn't filter at all. Instead, the PPP rebuilds brand new AC from your power regardless of its condition. This is always superior to filtering because a filter can't repair the AC waveform, it can only help clean it. The regenerator works by first converting the AC power to DC and then back again to AC - only this time the AC is flawless. No noise, no distortion and no voltage drops or sags. The difference between any power conditioner and a Power Plant is like night and day. A single modern Power Plant is capable of running all the equipment in most AV systems and the improvements it brings are significant and immediately obvious. As I mentioned at the beginning of the newsletter, Power Plant Premiers were a large part of our presentation in New York and it's really no surprise. I have been preaching about the value of building a solid AC foundation for your system for over 11 years now and slowly but surely that message is reaching folks who are amazed at the results. These past few months the industry has again taken note of the PPP's achievements. The Absolute Sound Magazine presented us with two Golden Ear awards for 2008. Stereo Times gave us the Most Wanted Component award, and Home Theater Sound gave us their coveted Reviewer's Choice Award. Pretty cool for a product you don't even listen to. In the recent Hi Fi + review of the Premier, Jimmy Hughes writes: '.....Although my perception was that each improvement had been fairly small, I had to admit the whole system was now sounding very sweet and transparent. It sounded extremely clean and relaxed, with good detail and clarity. The music had greater finesse and seemed more refined. At this point I unplugged everything from the PS PPP and went back to mains from the distribution board. It was then that the penny dropped. All at once, the sound seemed to lose its easy transparency and inner detail. Everything seemed rather bland and less focused.' What Jimmy is describing is an all too common situation. You get the AC power foundation right with a PPP and get used to the new system and how it is performing. It isn't until you remove the PPP from the system that really makes the difference. Let's face it, it's easy to get used to something and accept it as 'normal' but when that is taken away, the end result can be pretty disappointing without the regenerated power. Power Plants and video One last Power Plant mention before we move on to the Ultra system. Good friend, musician and former  audio reviewer Dan Schwartz has been playing with a Premier in his audio system for a while now with very positive results. When he got the PPP, Dan powered his whole system, including his television, with a PPP. To say he was blown away at the results was putting it mildly.Dan called me up to ask if I had seen the benefits of pure AC on televisions, plasmas and projectors. Why do we only write about audio applications when clearly, some of the most noticeable of improvements can be with video? A remarkably better picture with deeper color saturation, far less video noise, clarity and greater sense of three dimensionality are all benefits provided by a PPP on video. Dan is still using a Proton 32' TV he got for review for The Perfect Vision in 1989. He tells me that very little of the set works any more except for the CRT itself, but that he stills feels it provides a better image of standard resolution NTSC video than modern flat-panel displays. Powering the nearly antique Proton now with the PPP, he reports 'a far more stable color quality with virtually no visible noise artifacts such that the picture itself seems more stable and solid and film-like'. Dan also sees a much stronger white level (what we used to call brightness) - not brighter but stronger, as if the screen were suddenly new again. I am not sure why we don't mention this more often either except to suggest that at our core, we're Audiophiles and focus most of our attention on two channel. But Dan is correct. (He also says that he's getting the best performance of digital in his system he ever has and is pulling out a large number of CDs to try them again). PPP's and video are a match made in heaven! If you haven't seen the dramatic improvement yet, you really owe it to yourself to do so. Thanks Dan for the tip! The Ultra System explained I get a lot of emails from customers who really are struggling with the Ultra System that currently includes the upcoming PWT memory player and the Ultralink DAC. Customers are still unclear about how everything fits together as a system and, well, I can’t really blame them. One of the reasons I haven't written much about this system is the fact it's still evolving. True that the  PWT and Ultralink are pretty set in stone and are now scheduled for release in February 2009, with beta testing beginning next month. But here's where it gets confusing. These two pieces of equipment are only part of a larger system so it's helpful if I take a moment and try and bring some clarity to this for you.Let's start with what the Ultra system is and then follow that with a listing of the elements within the Ultra system. Philosophically, the Ultra system was conceived first with the idea of transcending the limitations found in the storage medium and delivery system of digital music and second, creating a superior control and access methodology to one's library. Finally we wanted to bring this to market at a price people can afford. I like to think of the Ultra system in terms of building blocks. This is probably a pretty good way to view the setup as we've designed these elements to support a myriad of system configurations. That means everything from a single transport or DAC in a classic two-channel setup to an entire whole house music server system. Let's start with the PWT and the Ultralink. The PWT memory player is first and foremost a transport. But true to our philosophical viewpoint of the system, the PWT needed to transcend the limitations of the optical disc inherent in pretty much every transport or player on the planet and support the ease of use concept as well. So we designed a true memory player that rips the data from the optical medium in such a way that the medium itself no longer has a bearing on the quality of the sound. The PWT will be able to read just about anything on a CD and the same for a DVD. Again, the PWT is built to transcend the limitations of the physical medium and that includes file format, disc quality, sample rate and bit depth. True to our desire to provide a true library experience, the PWT will automatically find and display the cover art and song titles of whatever media you place in it to play. This will require an internet connection, of course, but once connected there will be zero setup and zero hassle retrieving the data. It's a cool feature for a cool product. The Ultralink is a high-end two-channel DAC that converts the digital audio data fed to it into an analog music signal we can play on our system. But it can also play the part of a preamp control center with its multiple inputs and volume control as well as become a network media player through the connection of its internal Bridge. The Bridge The Bridge is the connection interface to a home network. I know this is where a lot of you get confused so let's back off just for a moment and do an overview of a connected player and what that means. A DAC converts digital audio (something we can't listen to) into analog audio we can pump directly into a power amp or preamp to listen to. How the digital audio is presented to the DAC is what we need to look at and where the differences lie. We are probably all familiar with a coax or optical digital input on a DAC. It's how we get digital audio off our CD player or transport. There are other means of delivering digital audio however, and those include I2S, USB, TCPIP over a network or wireless. There are more, but let’s focus on these. I2S we talked about in a prior newsletter. It is a superior form of delivery for digital audio and is the preferred method of connection between the Ultralink and PWT. USB is the easiest way to get digital audio off a computer. TCPIP over a network is what we'll focus on. I am not going to get technical. Let me just suggest that in the same way standard digital audio is converted into a single stream, called SPDIF, to make it possible to connect it with an RCA cable or an optical cable; TCPIP is just another format that permits you to send the same digital audio over a network. The network particulars aren't too critical. The network could be through your home's wireless router or it could be through the same cables you use to connect your computer to the internet. The PS Bridge is simply an interface device that converts this network digital audio into something the DAC can handle and so you can hear music. Make sense? The Bridge will be available in the Ultralink, which allows the Ultralink to receive digital audio in multiple ways: RCA, XLR, optical, USB, I2S, and TCPIP. Lots of fancy technical stuff but what's easy to understand is that the Ultralink can take just about anything in and give you perfect audio out. The bridge will also be available in lower cost DAC models later in 2009, and these lower cost DAC models can be used as zones or media players throughout your entire home. Storage and control We are still working out the details of the last two key elements in this system, storage and control. Obviously, you need to be able to store all your digital audio somewhere other than 1000 CD and DVD’s. You'll want to have these stored on a hard drive of some sort. Next, you will want a way to organize your stored digital music and select what you are going to play and what device in the house will play it. That is the job of the controller and again, we're still crafting what this is going to be. Lastly, you will want to be able to access your library of media from anywhere in the world. This luxury will allow you to have the ability to play anything you own from anywhere you are: the office, a second home, a friend's house, jogging, perhaps even in the car. Put all of these elements together and you have a better understanding of what we're up to, where we're going and what the eventual Ultra System will look like. It is our intention to build a system that is fully upgradeable and will serve up any resolution audio product anywhere in the world with perfect reproduction. I guess you could say we're stepping into the future with the first big paradigm shift in digital audio since the introduction of the CD over 20 years ago. There is much to stay tuned for. Power Port trade up program I promised you last newsletter that due to the lagging economic situation we'd do our best to provide some  type of bargain each month so you can take advantage of these programs. This month we have two: a trade up program for the Power Port Premier and a sale on our award winning GCPH phono stage, named best phono stage in the world by editors in the UK. The Power Port Premier is our newest product and it is a killer piece. If you haven't tried it or haven't yet replaced your Power Port in the listening room, now's the time. Here's what we're offering. We'll buy back any Power Port you have in your home for $25 half of what you paid in the first place. Apply this $25 towards the purchase of a Power Port Premier and go to town. You may purchase as many as you want, without limit for the entire month of December. You can even take advantage of the Premier’s 5 pack pricing which allows you to buy 5 for the price of 4. Combine this with the $25 credit for each Power Port and that’s a heck of a deal. Here's how it works. Simply call us on our toll free number 866.406.8946 and order as many Power Port Premiers as you want. You'll be charged the price of the Power Port Premier less $25. Then, you need to make sure you get us the Power Port returned for credit within 30 days of the transaction. If you miss the deadline, we'll charge you back the $25. Now, understand we're also pretty lenient in this, so if there's a problem with 30 days, just let us know. We're not going to be sticklers on this. Phono anyone? Lastly, this month we're putting our award winning GCPH phono stage on sale for the month of December.  This isn't just a small savings. The regular price is $999 and you can purchase one this month and through December for just $699. That's a $300 savings. - and that ain't chicken feed! It's one of the best phono stages in the world, can be used as a standalone phono preamplifier with its included volume control so you have a straight shot right into the amp.As soon as December's over, the sale ends so if there's a vinyl system in your home, now's the time to take advantage of this great offer. Till December We also unveiled the new website this month but final tweaks are still being made so I wanted to make sure it's ready before unleashing it. Soon enough you'll see what we've been up to. It's really awesome and filled with community things to do and learn. Terri and I are going to attempt another Tofurkey for Thanksgiving this year so wish us luck. Happy holidays to you and yours! Paul McGowan |
