PS Audio DirectStream Junior - Unique architecture; Less sensitive to jitter; DSD Based

Owner’s Reference DirectStream Junior
4826 Sterling Drive, Boulder, CO 80301
PH: 720.406.8946 service@psaudio.com www.psaudio.com
©2016 PS Audio Inc. All rights reserved.
Introduction
®
Thank you for your purchase of the PS Audio
®
DirectStream Junior Digital To Analog Converter.
The PS Audio PerfectWave™ DirectStream Junior Digital to Analog Converter (DAC) is a state
of-the-art DAC, preamplier and media center. DirectStream accepts PCM as well as DSD Digital
Audio data and converts it to high-performance analog audio that can be fed directly to a power
amplier or preamplier.
DirectStream Junior, based on its larger sibling, DirectStream DAC, represents a major advancement
in the art of recreating the musical event.
Musical information that may have previously been hidden (or covered up by other DACs) in digital
audio media ranging from CDs to high resolution downloads will be uncovered by DirectStream
Junior.
Subtle musical details and cues such as upper harmonics, decay, reverb and room
reections will no longer be masked by the conversion process from digital to analog. Your music
will sound natural and you will be able to rediscover much of what you may have
been missing in your digital audio library with the introduction of DirectStream Junior into your
system.
DirectStream Junior features a unique architecture inside. From its digital inputs to its simple output
stage, DirectStream has been hand written, hand designed and personally voiced by its designer,
Ted Smith, along with PS Audio CEO Paul McGowan and legendary loudspeaker designer and
founder of Innity Loudspeaker Systems, Arnie Nudell.
DirectStream Junior is based on a FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) as its core processor
and no o-the-shelf DAC chips are used in its design.
DirectStream Junior is less sensitive to the vagaries of input source types and their level of jitter
than most DACs made. Remarkably low jitter sensitivity is one of the hallmarks of this design and
is accomplished by not using classic edge transition detection techniques used on the digital
input data. Instead, a proprietary method of extremely fast sample-and recognize technology is
employed that reduces dependency on cables, jitter and the quality of the incoming data source.
Once the data from the selected digital audio source has been input to DirectStream Junior it is
upsampled to ten times the standard DSD rate of 2.8MHz before any processing takes place. After
processing by DirectStream Junior all input data is converted to double rate DSD (5.6MHz) and
output through a passively ltered solid state analog section.
DirectStream Junior is entirely DSD based, even for PCM inputs. DSD was chosen as the core
engine for this instrument for a number of compelling reasons:
• DSD is simple to convert to analog: just low pass lter it.
• DSD is inherently linear: it’s hard to build a PCM DAC that always takes the same sized step
in the output for any possible unit increment of the representative PCM voltage value. The best
PCM technology for linearity is arguably a resistor ladder, then all steps are at least positive for a
Thank you
Designed by Ted
Smith
DSD Based
Uncover what
you’ve been
missing
Unique
architecture
Less sensitive to
jitter