I wasn’t being snarky in my post, so I’d appreciate not being condescended to or demeaned in turn, if I may so ask. I’m well aware of PS Audio’s coup in circumventing Sony’s DRM licensing limitations. Perhaps a little explanation of the back story of this stroke of genius is in order so folks won’t continue to mistake it for “innovation”.
Sony is the original inventor of SACD technology, as you know. And since the inception of the format, Sony has forced all manufacturers of SACD players to follow their own hardware limitations, namely downsampling all digital audio streams to a maximum of 48 kHz and 16 bit. Sony also owned a majority of the masters originally released in the SACD format, and they invoked this restriction to prevent bootleggers from pirating their own digital masters that far exceeded the resolution of standard Red Book CDs.
You’ll note that PS Audio, the only outfit who has managed to circumvent these restrictions, did not release their DirectStream DAC in isolation—they did so with the simultaneous release of first their PerfectWave SACD player, that was designed to offer this benefit when coupled with one of their proprietary DACs, via McGowan’s beloved IIS protocol. Then they “upgraded” the technology to their DirectStream line, at even higher prices.
PS Audio could not have achieved this “innovation” without the express permission and cooperation from Sony, without incurring major lawsuits. Even high dollar Marantz SACD players do not have access to the bit perfect DSD layer, because they are just as restricted by Sony’s DRM rights as any other manufacturer is. So PS Audio did not achieve this breakthrough by any strokes of technological brilliance—they merely bought the rights to supersede the licensing limitations from Sony, who would only agree to this if the format was limited to a non-standard (at the time) transmission protocol—namely, IIS.
So that $6,000 price tag you paid for to gain access to that DSD layer largely went to Sony for their licensing rights. There’s no magic otherwise in PS Audio’s DAC or SACD player, nor is there anything superior about IIS over standard USB (despite McGowan’s inscrutable claims to the contrary). It’s all a ruse to get you believe that McGowan has mystical gifts as an engineer, and to convince you to part ways with a month’s worth of salary to buy these two units as a pair accordingly.
Lest you misunderstand my motives, I’ve long been tempted to buy into this just so I could access the only way possible to play my SACDs natively through my headphone setup. If you’re happy with these assets, as I’ve said before, I champion and celebrate that for you, and I have aspired to what you have myself for some time. Where I take exception is when folks start implying that the DAC itself offers superior performance over much less expensive offerings, or when folks pass along McGowan’s unsubstantiated scientific claims that he promotes to obfuscate the truth behind DirectStream’s technology, the “benefits” of IIS, and his profit-seeking motives. PS Audio is inarguably savvy, but their ingenuity is in strategy, not so much on the bench. Peace.