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When eLyric Music Manager is installed/run on the music host (in my case a MacMini), a database of library content is created/updated and then parsed wirelessly to the iOS app as the user navigates his/her library. The 'browse' artist, album or song search functions are reasonably zippy. Hitting ‘play now’ on an album of choice sees a short delay of one or two seconds (presumably whilst it is buffered in the Network Bridge) before we have lift-off.
The iPhone version of the eLyric app is a little more polished than its iPad brother. There's a cover-art driven ‘now playing’ screen that also allows for play/pause and track advancement and its browsing screens are segmented alphabetically. Common to both apps is the (neat) ability to control the PS Audio-specific options of the PWD like select digital filters, change upsampling and of course attenuate volume. All this is very handy when the listening chair is without the line of sight needed for the infra-red remote. Besides it’s better to have one device that does everything. The iPad app is nice 'n all but the iPhone version nails a more comprehensive end user experience.
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The quest for gapless. Back in 2004/2005 I was driven to distraction that neither iPods nor Squeezebox could handle gapless MP3. As iPod use exploded from early adopters to full mainstream appeal, those angst-y gapless horses circled ever tighter around Steve Jobs and Sean Adams (Slim Devices). The punters demanded gapless playback! When Slim Devices eventually announced lossless gapless Ogg Vorbis, I thought long and hard about making the switch to this lesser-known (compressed) format just so that I could enjoy gapless albums as they were intended. [Historical side note: this was long before 1TB storage only cost a hundred bucks. The hard drive space required to store a large FLAC library (which has been gapless since day one of the Squeezebox) would’ve required $1000+ multi-drive servers. Around the same time (2005-6), Ogg Vorbis weighed heavy on 1st Gen iPod Nano owners' minds. The alternative Rockbox firmware could also handle gapless with Ogg Vorbis.]
Despite it not being an intrinsically gapless codec, Slim Devices ultimately announced gapless MP3 support for the Squeezebox so the sun came up and the birds chirped once more. All was right with the world. I’m underscoring the historical context here because gapless playback (for this reviewer at least) is essential. It’s probably also essential for anyone who listens to DJ mix compilations, live albums and albums as song suites (hello every Pink Floyd fan). Don’t be fooled. Such listeners represent a major slice of music fan-dom. As is common with many software solutions, the devil is in the details.
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Prior to installing eLyric Music Manager, I had the PerfectWave DAC and Network Bridge working in tandem with Twonky media server. Hi-res playback? Yes sir—all the way to 24/192—but when browsing folder contents, songs were displayed alphabetically instead of numerically by track number. Oh dear. Then the sucker punch. No gapless. Not with hi-res and not with 16/44. (WTF?) FLAC is an intrinsically gapless codec so why the three-second gap between songs? Oh dear. Bye bye Twonky, hello PS Audio's eLyric Music Manager.
eLyric Music Manager’s interface isn't quite as polished as iTunes but being an ardent FLAC hoarder and ALAC refusenik that's a non-issue to this user. It does what is says on the tin. With more features on the application development roadmap—software playback is due in 2012—eLyric is currently squarely focused on library management and network streaming. It's the jumping-off point for creating one or more libraries with which to feed the Network Bridge and also carry out that all-important all-annoying tagging. I had eLyric Music Manager create two libraries: one of hi-res content and one (much larger) library of Redbook fare.
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The gremlins again put in a cameo appearance. The hi-res library scanned fine but the Redbook library scan kept the hard drive churning overnight and I awoke to find the application still swamping the CPU. To McGowan's credit he and his team are all over bugs such as this. Within a week I had a new eLyric update to play with, this time with successful library scanning. PS Audio might be a small company but their speedy responsiveness to user issues is to be commended.
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My favourite pop-cultural artefact is Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense. To me, it's as close to perfection as I'm likely to hear in this lifetime. It's nervy, nerdy and funky. It's energised and beautiful. Each annual spin is a real occasion in this household, a quiet afternoon where I'm unlikely to be disturbed. It is a personal event.
I was unreasonably excited at the prospect of hearing a 24-bit version ripped from the DVD run via eLyric MM and the Network Bridge. But hopes were dashed when "Psycho Killer" didn't blend seamlessly (via crowd noise) into "Heaven". A two-second bolt of silence struck hard and jarred. No gapless. Gah. I pulled on McGowan's coat about the gapless issue. According to his replies and accompanying chatter over on the PS Audio forum it was ‘imminent’.
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Another week, another (software) update. Gapless playback was now possible but only with a little user preparation. Each song would need to be tagged for gapless playback. A checkbox marked ‘gapless’ had crept into the tag detail window. I hit up Dark Side Of The Moon with this checkbox action and sure enough, tunes flowed seamlessly. Lovely. What about the rest of the library? Was I required to Ctrl-A/Checkbox them all? How long would eLyric take to process 3000+ albums this way? Would it crash eLyric? I wasn't game enough to find out. Moreover I would be obliged to run each new library addition through the same process. Close but no cigar.
The Network Bridge is 99 parts heaven(ly hardware) with organic sonics that take the PWD to another level; and 1 part hell(ish software) where the user experience hits the sand in the vaseline. The server software that underpins the richer-sounding Network Bridge is in relative infancy—eLyric Music Manager is only just emerging from its beta cocoon—but it's already very stable and eminently usable. Once gapless playback is sorted, my main criticism will go up in a puff of smoke. At time of writing default gapless playback was being worked on and according to chatter on the PSAudio forum again 'imminent'.
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Two more bugs. eLyric's handling of Various Artist compilations (e.g. the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' Until The End Of The World) also needs some tweaking. Songs aren't displayed—and therefore played—in the correct order. And some album artwork doesn't display correctly on the DAC's touch screen. These quibbles' annoyance is amplified by knowing the Network Bridge to bring superior sonic satisfaction to that of the PWD fed direct from a MacMini. When bridged the PWD sounds smoother and more relaxed as though the music had spent two weeks laying by a pool on a Grecian island. It mirrors the vibe of the PS Audio factory itself as place where business is conducted with formality but without tension.
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Most manufacturers would've been content to piggyback the end user's iTunes install. Paul McGowan is clearly on a mission for a more bespoke solution that circumvents many of the shortcomings of more basic USB DAC'd rigs. PS Audio should be applauded for developing their own UPnP server application and iOS apps. Both provide a platform from which Paul McGowan's team can work directly with end users to straighten their experiential kinks and meet some of their (collective) digital audio wants/needs. McGowan himself is a prolific contributor to the PS Audio website and forum. "As far as the future, we're absolutely committed to connected high-end audio. We believe that it is entirely possible to have all the fun of a network music system without suffering any compromises or downsides to connecting through a network. In fact the PWD and Bridge are only the first of a series of products we are building that will bring the high-end into the 21st century." He wasn’t kidding…
December 2011. Just as I'd begun to set this review commentary in aspic, a curve ball announcement came from left field. "The PerfectWave DAC's digital processing board has been overhauled to elevate it to Mark II status: analogue switching, asynchronous 24/192 on USB, new remote control, no more SRC - instead there's 'NativeX' (the new name for a new type of Digital Lens). It’s a US$995 field-serviceable upgrade (for existing owners) that promises to elevate the performance of both PWD and Network Bridge. Prospective PWD MKII buyers will see an in-store price hike to US$3995." Expect to see some PerfectWave DAC Mark II review coverage here in early 2012. |
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