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PS Audio Stellar GainCell Preamplifier/DAC

In the Stellar GainCell Preamp/DAC, PS Audio has created a versatile preamplifier that can operate in both the analog and digital domains.

This unassuming low-profile product offers fully balanced analog circuitry from input to output and a full-featured DAC based on the state-of-the-art 32-bit ESS Sabre Hyperstream architecture, which is capable of processing both PCM (through all its digital inputs, up to 24-bit/384-kHz) and DSD signals (through its I²S and USB inputs, up to 5.6 MHz). The versatility of the Stellar Gain Cell Preamp/DAC does not stop there; it also includes an analog headphone amplifier with a headphone jack on the front panel. Other features of the preamplifier include selectable DAC filters, home-theater bypass, and DC in-out triggers. All this for $1699! A bargain, you ask? My answer to that would be: not so fast, depending on the sonic performance the product can deliver. I will delve more into this in my upcoming review of this interesting preamp/DAC unit.

Yongki Go, Ph.D.

Yongki considers himself as an aerospace engineer by day and an audio/home-theater enthusiast by night/weekend. He earned his doctoral degree in aerospace engineering from MIT in 1999 and has pursued a career in academia before changing path to join the aerospace industry. He has been writing for SECRETS since its early years, but was on hiatus during the few years when he was living overseas. He has been actively writing for SECRETS again not long after his return to the US in 2012. Although his field of expertise is in aerospace control systems as exemplified by more than 80 technical articles in various aerospace-related journals and conferences, his passion has always been in hi-fi audio reproduction. It is this continued passion for audio that has kept him as a long-time member of the SECRETS team.