John
If you’ve been thinking about creating vinyl rips – having a dog and then barking yourself – PS Audio might have you covered with a VERY interesting analogue-digital crossover product. Soft-launched on the PS Audio forums in late May, the NuWave Phono Converter (NPC) is both dedicated phono pre-amp (analogue output) and ADC (digital output).
Look at the rear of the unit: I2S, coaxial outputs can feed a downstream DAC with PCM (up to 24/192), DSD or DSD128 [using DoP over coax], all selectable from a front-facing display panel.
Paul McGowan has been pushing converted ones and zeroes back into the PerfectWave MKII DAC with results he claims to be every bit as good as the analogue output the NuWave converter itself. Balanced and single ended options on offer here.
The USB presumably allows one to write the DSD or PCM output stream to a file for hard drive archiving.
Take note: all digital paths see data run through a PS Audio Digital Lens to minimise jitter. It’s this buffer technology that gave the MKII PerfectWave DAC an upper hand over the original. The fun doesn’t stop there: one can also play the digital conversion game with any line-level input. Welcome to the party cassette and 8-track lovers!
The PS Audio NuWave converter is slated to launch next month (August) and will sell stateside for US$1895. Australian RRP is AU$2495.
Woof woof.
Further information: PS Audio
EDIT (August 15th): The NWPC has been formally announced – you can read the full press release here.
