PS Audio SUNLIGHT firmware upgrade for DACS' ~ The Sound Advocate

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The PS Audio Sunlight Firmware Upgrade for Its PerfectWave DirectStream DAC and DirectStream Jr.– A New “mountaintop” OS achieves a remarkable new level of sound quality along with improved performance including quad-rate DSD capability –

May 4, 2021 – PS Audio has released its Sunlight firmware upgrade for its PerfectWave DirectStream DAC and DirectStream Jr. The new OS enables the DirectStream DAC to deliver an extraordinary new level of musical realism and improved performance including quad-rate DSD capability, and significantly enhances the audio quality of the DirectStream Jr.

“The sonic improvements provided by the Sunlight are not subtle – it’s like getting an entirely new DAC,” said Paul McGowan, PS Audio CEO. “Sunlight is the result of testing more than 20 iterations of code and months of programming, listening and fine-tuning by our digital engineering guru Ted Smith, senior hardware engineer Darren Myers (who also designed the latest M1200 mono blocks) and others on the development team. It’s the ultimate expression of PS Audio’s ‘mountaintop’ series of upgrades.”

The Sunlight upgrade is made possible because the PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC is one of the few DACs on the market that is fully programmable, by means of its FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) core processing engine. This flexible architecture allows every parameter that controls the DirectStream DAC to be configured and tweaked.

With the Sunlight OS, the DirectStream DAC will now accept quad-rate DSD via its I²S input. By precisely controlling the clock timing of the signals in the various stages of the circuit, noise and jitter are significantly reduced. The sonic results of the Sunlight upgrade are a greater sense of resolution and space, a more natural tonal balance with improved top-end extension, better micro and macro dynamics, and a much more involving and engaging musical presentation overall.

Sunlight OS for the PS Audio PerfectWave DirectStream DAC can be downloaded free of charge by visiting the PS Audio Website. Sunlight OS for the DirectStream Jr. can be downloaded from there. In addition, Sunlight can be purchased pre-loaded onto an SD card (for the DirectStream DAC or USB stick (for the DirectStream Jr.) for $29.