PS Audio PWD MkII vs W4S DAC2

Very sound advice from Vhiner, much word of mouth confirmation from owners say it's a exceptional DAC.

After playing a few days and connecting the bridge, I have to say the sound continues to improve and the soundstage has opened up significantly.

Also, I was trying to figure out the best connection for the bridge and integration with my Apple airport extreme. Ps Audio tech told me Apple wi fi bridge more would not work well as they do not support UPNP. I cannot use power-line as it sucks in my house. You cannot use USB wifi adapters either. Finally, I found the NETGEAR Universal Wi-Fi adapter, which is one of the only adapters that act as a bridge and work with Apple. It gets its power from a usb line and provides the ethernet cable out. It works like a charm, and I can stream my 192Khz Flac files at about 6000kbps with no dropouts at all. Pretty satisfied.

If, after a few weeks and you are satisfied with its performance, you might
want to check the forums about upgrading your two fuses to
Hifi Tuning Supremes (very significant performance boost, IMHO). If you
want to hear what any DAC is truly capable of, upgrade the power cord.
Digital playback is very, very susceptible to electrical noise.

i'll second Vhiner's comments and take it one step further. my PWDII/Bridge/PWT are the most sensitive pieces of gear i've ever owned. power supply, power cords, fuses and vibration/isolation all made substantial improvements in sound...when similar upgrades were much harder to notice in the rest of my set-up.

went into the fuse upgrade thinking no way could this work....walked away completely impressed. just like dedicated power lines, PC's and a nice rack.... the sound just kept getting better!.

break in was incredibly long (300-500 hours). thought i was there after 300 hours as things were sounding really good. then....200 hours later....it was sounding even better??. you will know when you get there =)

also...don't forget to use CAT 6 or 7 Ethernet cables. they made a difference for me as well (yep...i know this is crazy).

This doesn't appear to be the issue, but just for others' reference, I tried an Oppo 95 as a transport for the PWD, and it was really terrible. Lots of the bad characteristics that were listed above. I loved the Oppo's video, but it was really a poor match with the dac and I returned it to Amazon within my 30 day window. I ended up using that money to buy a MacMini, and it completely turned around my impression of the PWD... especially once I copied all my disks over to a harddrive. I haven't heard the PW Transport, but using a computer server with the PWD was really a spectacular solution.