After years of delays and stutter steps this unique playback machine has finally arrived and thus far delivers the goods beyond what I expected from standard Red-Book recordings. This digital dynamo outperformed my beloved (and three times more expensive) Holfi battery-powered CD player. Another one of the PWT's amazing features however is its ability to play back almost anything you throw at it (minus SACD). This includes WAV files (any resolution), and DVD discs such as the new and exciting HRx discs from Reference Recordings.

PS Audio's website, in regard to the PWT reads, "...it accomplishes this task in a manner quite different than other CD transports and players. Using an optical ROM reader, the PWT extracts the data off any CD or DVD in bit-perfect condition without using error correction and places that data into a special version of the PS Audio Digital Lens. Once inside the Digital lens, the musical information is stored in pure form without clocks or any reference to time. The stored musical information is then retrieved by the PWT's asynchronous fixed timing clock and output to your DAC with perfect timing and extremely low jitter..."

Not the sonic equal of the original Nova Physics Memory Player but, as far as I'm concerned, the PS Audio PWT IS the only worthy alternative for those who don't want to spend big dough on the Nova Physics Memory Player.

Most wanted component 2009