Sprout100

Stellar’s design imperative was to produce a truly musical sounding power amplifier that proudly competed with any amplifier under $5,000. Its designer, PS Audio engineer Darren Myers, took the challenge and set to work on a new concept—a hybrid that would combine the best of today’s technology with time-honored techniques leveraging PS Audio’s forty plus years of experience.

The results are extraordinarily musical. Even from the earliest prototype we knew the Stellar power amplifier series was going to be something special. Stellar amplifiers never draw attention to themselves, a rare quality in amplifiers of any price. After hundreds of hours of tuning, voicing, and perfectionist tweaking, we were confident the ends justified the means.

Audition the Stellar S300 and you’ll appreciate Myer’s dedication to musical truth without compromise.

It turns out that a great analog preamp preserves a DAC’s magic. Together, DAC and preamp form a new class of product whose sum is greater than its parts.

Stellar Gain Cell DAC. A redefined and improved NuWave DSD and a Gain Cell analog preamplifier in one chassis.

Think of the Stellar Gain Cell DAC as a complete analog control center with an exceptional performing DAC at its heart.

All the features and functions you’d ever want in a DAC are right here in Stellar. Pure DSD, asynchronous USB, Digital Lens technology, I²S to connect to our best transport, balanced throughout, analog volume control. Replace your preamplifier, your DAC—or both—and be stunned at the level of improvement when the full and rich tapestry of music surprises and delights your senses.

In the more than forty years of PS Audio’s design innovations and breakthrough products, Stellar’s groundbreaking level of performance as our gateway standalone DAC and preamplifier is unmatched for price and performance by their standalone competitors. Taken together, we’re willing to bet you’ve never heard anything quite this good at anywhere even remotely close to this price.

Stellar phono features dual inputs that can support either a moving coil or moving magnet cartridge, or a two-tonearm set up to enjoy the best of each at the user’s discretion. Cartridge loading and gain options are easily adjusted from your listening position via the supplied remote control.

Phono preamplifiers at anywhere near this price range are almost always integrated circuit based, but not Stellar. Input to output, Stellar is a fully discrete FET design with extraordinarily low noise and high overload capabilities so even the wildest dynamics from the punchiest cartridges sail through Stellar with no limitations or compromise whatsoever.

If you love vinyl you’ll love Stellar.

Stellar’s design imperative was to produce a truly musical sounding power amplifier that proudly competed with any amplifier under $5,000. Its designer, PS Audio engineer Darren Myers, took the challenge and set to work on a new concept—a hybrid that would combine the best of today’s technology with time-honored techniques leveraging PS Audio’s forty plus years of experience.

The results are extraordinarily musical. Even from the earliest prototype we knew the Stellar power amplifier series was going to be something special. Stellar amplifiers never draw attention to themselves, a rare quality in amplifiers of any price. After hundreds of hours of tuning, voicing, and perfectionist tweaking, we were confident the ends justified the means.

Audition the Stellar M700 pair and you’ll appreciate Myer’s dedication to musical truth without compromise.

Audiophiles have long recognized the challenge of interconnecting multiple systems into a single synergistic musical experience. Interconnect choices, power supply options, and chassis isolation requirements all play into the building of a truly musical system—get any one part wrong and the system performance is compromised. Not so with Stellar Strata. The chance for PS Engineering to optimize the audio synergy between Strata’s four separate systems was immediately appealing: eliminate the variability of interconnection issues, voice the entire system as one component, optimize power supplies, control every aspect of sound quality up to the speakers.

At this instrument’s heart is the analog GainCell™. Developed by PS Audio founder Paul McGowan, the Gain Cell™ elegantly solves the fundamental problem facing preamp designers. Volume control. Nearly all analog preamplifiers use additional sonically-degrading elements inserted in the signal path to control volume. The Gain Cell eliminates this problem without additional circuitry in the signal path by varying its gain in response to front panel controls.

Integrated into this analog preamplifier is a stunning, Bob Stadtherr designed, Darren Myer’s voiced, DAC. Based on industry-leading Sabre32 bit Hyperstream architecture, Strata relies upon a fully balanced Class A analog output stage with multiple power supplies, independent jitter-reduced inputs, DSD, I2S, and asynchronous USB.

Once the high definition streaming module or connected source has passed through the Class A analog preamplifier, it’s time to connect to your speakers. Here, engineer Darren Myers used the Analog Cell where he could lavish upon the music the sweet, tube-like quality of Class A biased MOSFETs. Combined with the ruler flat high linearity of Strata’s high current output stage, richly overlayed layers of music’s inner details are preserved even in the most complex orchestral crescendos.

There’s nothing like Strata when it comes to musicality. It’s an all-in-one high-resolution audio solution just waiting for you to connect your speakers. Bring it on!

This product qualifies for our risk free in-home trial in the continental United States when purchased directly from PS Audio. And, trade in and save. Let us repurchase your old equipment at its full and original retail price. We’ll give it a good home and make sure you have the best power in the world. Just click the green Trade Up and Save button above these words to take advantage.

DSJ uses the same 20X upsampling FPGA architecture and customized code as PS Audio’s DirectStream DAC, and it is designed and built by the exact same team. The idea behind the DSJ was to offer near-identical performance at a fraction of the cost. How was this accomplished? Lower cost chassis and user interface.

DSJ, like DirectStream, is hand-written, discrete, perfection based conversion that uncovers all the missing information hiding in your digital audio media for all these years. CD’s, downloads, high-resolution PCM or DSD based media are expertly upsampled in the DSJ to twenty times DSD rate and output as pure analog directly into your amplifier or preamplifier. Classic PCM-based DACS, including many of today’s DACS that can also process DSD, tend to cover up some of the subtle musical details buried deep within digital audio music; a problem inherent in their architecture. DSJ solves this problem by employing a pure DSD single-bit approach for both PCM as well as DSD media. This means that your entire library of music can finally reveal all the music and low-level details buried deep within its core – and now, at a more affordable price than its progenitor, DirectStream.

Imagine going to a recording studio and listening to a master tape of any recording made. This is the experience DSJ affords its owners who enjoy a renewed sense of enjoyment and discovery when listening to everything in their library: CD’s, downloads, DSD.

DMP is a universal transport, capable of playing multiple types of optical discs including, DVD-Audio, AVCHD, SACD, HRx, CD, CD-R/RW, DVD±R/RW, DVD±R DL, BD-R/RE, as well as stored data through its USB digital input.

CD performance of DMP has been enhanced to a degree once thought unobtainable, narrowing the gap between Red Book CD reproduction and high resolution PCM and DSD. Played through DMP, ordinary CDs take on new life, with improved dimensionality, soundstage width and depth, improved dynamics (both micro and macro), increased low level harmonic information, and richer tonal balance.

Plus, hear SACD for the first time

The protected DSD layer of SACD has long been available only through D/A converters built in to players and a few receivers and surround processors. These internal D/A processors, while adequate, were never capable of playing back stored music at the quality and performance levels enjoyed by mastering engineers. Now, with the introduction of PS Audio’s revolutionary new memory player, DMP, owners of our DirectStream series of DACs can uncover all that they have been missing. Based on a proprietary handshake protocol between DMP and PS Audio DACs, through our advanced I²S interface, pure DSD is streamed to, and processed in, the same reference quality DAC used by mastering engineers.

This is clearly one of the most important pieces of audio equipment you can own. Expect far better micro and macro dynamics as well as a cleaner, lower noise background.

Don’t starve your music or risk damaging your equipment. A P12 gives you greatly improved performance and safety from just plugging into the wall socket and far better dynamics, bass and a much bigger, open soundstage than any passive power conditioner on the market. Why settle for anything but a Power Plant? Take one home and try it today.