Playback Designs - Music Playback System MPS-5

"The MPS-5 is a truly wonderful player and is recommended for anyone wanting to hear what the best digital can offer...Make it simple and delicate and the MPS-5 gets it all down with a breathtaking touch to the music - light and airy. Oh so sweet and as resolving of the finest details or filigree that one can almost reach out and touch it." 2009 Brutus Award winner - Dave Clark, Positive Feedback Online, Issue 46
http://positive-feedback.com/Issue46/playback_designs.htm

The Playback Designs Music Playback System 5, also known as MPS-5, is a product that can compete with some of the finest analog setups and comes closer to the original recording session and master tapes than anything we have heard. The MPS-5 is really two products in one single box: a world class CD/SACD transport combined with a DAC that can also receive a variety of external digital sources, including PC based music servers - not only a unique and powerful combination, but also versatile in applications.

The Playback Designs MPS-5 starts with a modified Esoteric transport mechanism. Although there are quite a few very good mechanisms to use for a lot less money, the chosen transport delivers excellent stabilility and reliability. The build quality is excellent and being the work horse of the player, we decided that the substantial increase in our cost to use these devices was well worth it, especially for the long term.

While the MPS-5 is a world class CD/SACD player, its internal DAC can also be used with external digital sources through a multitude of digital inputs. In particular it can be connected directly to a PC via the USB interface, whereby the MPS-5 becomes the soundcard of the PC and converts all the digital audio from the PC to analog via the same processes used for the transport. Finally you can expect the same level of sonic performance from your PC as you can from the transport. The MPS-5 automatically recognizes any source (such as a PC, IPod, Discman, etc.) and uses new technology we have developed called PDFAS (Playback Designs Frequency Arrival System) to completely eliminate all jitter.

The Playback Designs MPS-5 will challenge what you have come to expect as the limitations of digital playback!

Features:

2 Dimensional DAC Technology and Computer Audio

Audio is represented in a y/x-axis system: the y-axis for amplitude and the x-axis for time. Mostly because of analog audio's sensitivity problems in the y-axis, digital audio was introduced. But digital audio not only quantizes the y-axis, it does so as well on the x-axis. Sounds like we got more than we wanted - true and too bad. A typical state-of-the-art DAC converts between quantization levels in the digital y-axis and the analog y-axis and is completely transparent and open as to what happens on the x-axis (time domain). Sounds like we forgot the quantization on the x-axis.

This oversight forced us to treat digital audio signals as if they were analog: use special cables, use all kinds of mechanical devices for our CD players, power conditioners for digital audio etc. Looks like we just shifted the original problem from the y- axis to the x-axis, but the issues are still the same. Instead of interference or crosstalk we now call it clock jitter.

Almost all DACs available today deal with the y-axis only and rely on external devices for the x-axis, such as complicated master/slave clock arrangements or external sync clock generators. At best these devices are band-aids on a wide open wound deep inside the DAC. They help, but do not resolve the problem at the source. We need a 2-dimensional DAC that not only works on the y-axis, but also on the x-axis. With this we can separate the digital world completely from the analog one and render any digital cable, transmission format, storage media and application completely irrelevant to the final sonic performance. The only analog problem that we still have then is the separation of the power supplies for digital and analog.

The DAC inside the Playback Designs product line does exactly that: clock jitter from incoming digital audio signals can be described as an analog signal that gets mixed together with a quantized digital signal (our ideal and constant sample rate clock). So before any processing can happen we need to bring these 2 components into the same domain: The Playback Designs system quantizes the clock jitter into a digital signal, where it then can be subtracted from the original sample rate while the latter is converted to analog at the same time. Of the course, the DAC also works independently in the y-axis by using a set of unique algorithms in a completely discrete architecture (not even a single Op-Amp is used).

Tests have shown that the DAC inside the Playback Designs product line can be fed by any digital source including a PC, an inexpensive Discman, a DVD player, or high-end CD transport and none of them seem to make a difference on the sonic performance of the analog output signal. Ultimately this means that as long as you are sending our DAC truthful complete bits the source does not make a difference. We believe if you own a home computer, you already own a music server that cannot be sonically bettered!