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It's generally acknowledged by designers of audio equipment that the most reliable way to improve a product's performance without changing its basic circuitry is to improve the power supply. However, good power supplies are costly and not terribly glamorous, so manufacturers building products to meet certain price points often compromise in this area. Audio Alchemy's early digital processors were notorious for this, and the same seems to be true of the Perpetual Technologies products.

The P-3A's power supply is just a small transformer in a box; the P-1A has a…

Digital sources: PS Audio Lambda II transport, Bel Canto DAC 1 and MSB Link III (with upsampler board, Full Nelson option, P1000 power supply) digital processors.Preamplifier: Convergent Audio Technology SL-1 Ultimate.Power amplifier: Cary CAD-2A3-SE monoblocks.Loudspeakers: Avantgarde Acoustic Uno Series Two.Cables: Digital: Illuminati Orchid, Kimber Illuminations D-60. Interconnects: Nordost Quattro Fil. Speaker: Nordost S.P.M. Reference. AC: TARA Labs Decade.Accessories: Argent RoomLenses (4) room treatment, PS Audio P-300 AC synthesizer with MultiWave…

For these measurements, the P-1A and P-3A were both powered from the Monolithic Sound P3 supply. The P-3A's D/A converter didn't invert absolute polarity with its front-panel LED illuminated green, but did do so when the LED was red. It had a maximum output of 2.373V RMS, just under 1.5dB higher than the CD standard of 2V, with an output impedance below 1 ohm across the audioband. Channel separation (not shown) was superb, at better than 120dB below 400Hz, but with capacitive coupling between the channels reducing this to a still excellent 87dB at 20kHz.

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Editor: On behalf of everyone at Perpetual Technologies, I'd like to thank Stereophile and Bob Deutsch for this incisive and positively well-done review. We realize that the P-1A (particularly) and the P-3A present several reviewing challenges, and we really feel that the products were well understood and reviewed. Of course, this is only the opening act, as it were. My comments will be mostly nontechnical in nature, but directly after my few words from the grandstand, Peter Madnick and Keith Allsop will weigh in with some important technical comments…

Perpetual Technologies' P-3A digital processor offers astonishingly good performance, surpassing some highly regarded products that cost significantly more than its $799 price. (See my review in the January 2001 issue.) However, the fact that the P-3A is built to sell at a relatively modest price means that component quality cannot be the best. With this sort of product, the question that occurs to audiophiles who are into DIY (Do It Yourself) is whether the sound of the unit could be…

At a time when other designers of high-end solid-state equipment seemed to be pushing the envelope in terms of definition and detail—which, in some setups, was often at the cost of grayness or graininess (or at least fatigue)—Rowland's amps were usually a congenial refuge. Especially in the context of certain…

Lyra Parnassus D.C.t: Low-output moving-coil cartridge with Ceralloy diamond-coated cantilever, low-mass, Ogura PA line-contact stylus, six-nines single-wind copper coils, five-nines iron core, and body milled from a single piece of titanium. Source impedance: 2 ohms. Recommended stylus pressure: 1.6–1.8gm. Compliance: Approximately 12cu (compliance units) at 100Hz. Channel separation: 35dB or better at 1kHz. Frequency range: 10Hz–50kHz. Output: JVC TRS-1007 standard, 250µV (3.54cm/s, 45° peak); CBS STR-100 standard, 350µV (5cm/s). Recommended load: 50–47k ohms…

Olson's paper was all about the shapes of loudspeaker cabinets and the influence they have on frequency response…