PS Audio PerfectWave Owner's Reference Manual - page 13

Network Audio Playback

®

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15-042-21-1 Rev A

Instruction i

©2010 PS Audio International Inc. All rights reserved. 

Building the Network

You’ll need a Network for all the data to communicate back 

and forth. This is the central nervous system of the Bridge.  The 

Network is used to transfer data from storage to the Bridge and 

out to the Internet to get nice things like Album art.

If you plan on using an iDevice (iPhone, iTouch, iPad) to control 

the system you’ll need to have wireless access on the Network.

In order to display album artwork and provide detailed artist 

information a connection to the Internet is required.

Understanding the Controller 

The controller communicates via the network to discover 

available Servers and Players. The Controller accesses the 

available music on the Server and enables the user to play the 

music through a player.

In the PerfectWave System the Bridge operates on DLNA and 

UPnP standards. This is an open standard and allows the 

Bridge to be controlled by any DLNA/UPnP Controller.  PS 

Audio suggest the tagNplay controller application for use with 

the Bridge.

tagNplay

tagNplay is a DLNA/UPnP application that has been 

developed by PS Audio for Apple iDevices to provide  

powerful, yet simple and fun use, interface between the 

Bridge and their network content. The tagNplay application 

is available through psaudio.com or from iTunes.

Preparing the iDevice

If you use an iDevice as a controller, make sure the iDevice 

can talk to the wireless router. There may be a password the 

router wants before it can let the iDevice talk to the router.  

Make sure this is in the iDevice so whenever the iDevice 

gets into range of the router it ‘talks’ to the router.  Once the 

router password is set into the iDevice you don’t have to 

enter the password every time you start your music session, 

but you do have to set it up for the first time. You may have 

to manually go to the ‘settings’ button on the iDevice to tell 

it to select the router that has the Bridge and your server 

on it.  If you have been using another wireless network you 

may need to go into the settings on your iDevice and tell it to 

forget the old network. 

Install tagNplay

Now that the iDevice is working on the same Network as the 

Bridge we can install ‘tagNplay’ on the iDevice. This can be 

done by accessing the App store via the iDevice or through 

iTunes.

Understanding the Server

A network audio system has the advantage of offering a big 

choice: do you want a computer involved or not?  It is certainly 

possible to eliminate the computer entirely in a network audio 

setup like PS Audio’s PerfectWave system now, or anytime in 

the future. 

The first thing you need to think about when considering the 

Server options is where you’re going to store your music: inside 

or outside your computer or even if a computer is involved.  

Storing inside your computer is a reasonable option for small 

to medium music collections (2800 albums or less) as long as 

you make sure you use some type of external portable storage 

to back up the library and as long as you don’t mind having the 

computer on all the time.  

Storing outside your computer with a portable storage device is 

best for medium to large libraries (2800 albums or more), as it 

can easily be backed up and allows for unlimited growth of the 

library and doesn’t require a computer.

Accessing your stored media, placing it on the home network 

and making sure the media is delivered to the chosen player 

is the job of the Server software.  This software needs to be 

installed on your computer, NAS or DLNA/UPnP router and 

operates in the background.

There are multiple options for server software available, among 

them PS Audio’s own (upcoming) tagNPlay Server, available 

for MAC, Windows and Linux near the end of 2010.  In the 

meantime, we must choose server software and install it on 

our computer if we are going to be able to play music over our 

network.  The exception to this is if you have a DLNA/UPnP 

capable NAS or UPnP router to access your music.

The server must be a DLNA/UPnP based server.

The UPnP based server

The PS Audio network based high-resolution audio system has 

its roots in something called UPnP or Universal Plug and Play.  

UPnP is really nothing more than a way for network equipment 

to talk to one another.  The beauty of UPnP is everything is 

enabled with no setup.

Plug a component onto the network and it announces itself 

to any other UPnP device and the two do what’s known as a 

handshake and they are instantly communicating together.

The heart of this UPnP based system is the UPnP server.  Once 

installed on your computer, NAS or router, it will find all your 

media, find the PS Audio Bridge, and make itself, as well as all 

your media, available to the PS controller on the iPod/iPhone/

iPad.

Until the PS Audio tagNPlay server is ready for downloading, 

we recommend you install Twonky if you are using your 

computer to store the music.  Twonky is available for both 

MAC and Windows, is very efficient, and works well for the PS 

PerfectWave system.  Its downside is a crude user interface, but 

once you install Twonky on your computer, setup is easy and it 

just works.

Owner’s Reference

Perfect Wave DAC