Owner`s manual

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tandem, it’s not a veiled attempt to sell more product – it’s the stone cold truth.
As arresting as the P-3A is alone, what the P-1A brings to the party is that extra sense of
musical refinement, the elusive but palpable sense that what you’re listening to just became
more real and alive. It enhances your chance to suspend disbelief, even momentarily. The
P-1A makes complex music more intelligible by sorting out the mix more distinctly than the
P-3A alone. For example, in a great piece of chamber music, you will hear individual
virtuosity more intelligibly, which enhances the overall performance. In popular music, solo
instruments like a tenor sax or electric guitar bite more sharply when necessary, but whisper
more sweetly when asked to as well. You also pick up more of the overtones and
undertones, and more of the character and body of the instrument being played. Resolution
is further extended than with the P-3A alone, but it’s not the kind of resolution that sounds
like your car stereo with the bass and treble cranked to 11.
I don’t know for certain which aspect of the P-1A’s functionality contributes most to what it
does – there’s the true 24 bit interpolation, the re-clocking of the input signal and subsequent
jitter reduction, the speaker and room correction (!) which aren’t yet available, but should be
soon … the list goes on.
Comparing it to other components that serve similar functions, the P-1A handily outperforms
the Monarchy DIP, a fact that was evident when I turned off the resolution enhancement of
the P-1A allowing it to function primarily as a jitter reducer. The P-1A also bested the first
generation Genesis Digital Lens in my friend’s system where the comparison of the P-3A to
the Theta was performed. As far as value, $950 may seem like a lot for the P-1A compared
to the $699 price of the P-3A, but when you consider all the P-1A does now, and how much
more it will do in the future, you quickly realize that it’s still a bargain.
The $1,650 P-1A/3A combo, together with the $349 Monolithic Sound P
3
power supply, yield
a level of digital playback performance for around $2,000 that was unfathomable only a short
while ago. Importantly, the Perpetual products are also fully upgradeable and expandable,
which means that as the digital playback express continues to roll along, you will not be left
behind. Some of the best and brightest design minds in the industry are with Perpetual,
and they are the kind of guys you want on your team. Other companies specializing in
leading edge, digital-to-analog conversion are also worthy of your attention – I’ll report on
some in the near future. As of today, however, the Perpetual Technologies P-1A/3A combo
raises the price-to-performance bar in digital playback very high indeed. In fact, forget about
the reasonable price for a moment – the bar has simply been raised.
Setting Up the P-1A/3A to Optimize Performance
I mention this in every review, and never has it been more worthy of mention than now: Your
system is different than mine, and more importantly, so are your ears and listening
preferences. Therefore, please take these suggestions for what they are – merely
suggestions and certainly not universal truths.
I compiled a list of setup recommendations during my time with P-1A/3A. During the past
few months, I experimented extensively with settings and configurations to learn what
worked best in my system. These are worth sharing with you, with the hope that you will go
through the same type of experimentation with your own system.
1. Jon Lane of Perpetual Technologies recommended by e-mail that the P-1A be set