Paul McGowan writes: Ever notice how we all tend to gravitate towards the safe solution? It’s something I am certainly consistent with. We are more comfortable following Stereophile’s Recommended Component list (just to be safe), we keep our preamp’s balance control right in the middle (safer, in case we’re wrong), we use the recommended filter […]
Paul McGowan
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Paul McGowan writes: We’ve been focusing on the designer’s choices when building a DAC or a preamp and one of my readers asked a great question: if even a single pot or stepped attenuator has a sonic signature that degrades the music, how is it then possible that the original recording chain can produce good […]
Paul McGowan writes: When it comes to implementing or even inventing new technology how does the High-End industry react? Are we pushed, pulled or dragged? It is different for each company. For example, pushing the latest technology is something PS Audio and a few other forward thinking companies do – we are in the minority. […]
Paul McGowan writes: While enjoying a morning cup of coffee I was reading Art Dudley’s engaging article on his acquisition of an old pair of Altec Lansing loudspeakers in the May issue of Stereophile. In the latter half of the article he tries to tame the Altec horn of its tendency to ring when stimulated […]
Paul McGowan writes: If you’ve managed to wade through this series of posts on tubes vs. transistors you’d know that while there are indeed fundamental differences between tubes and transistors that by themselves have a major impact on the sound of equipment using them, there is no single device that really does it all with […]
It may sound funny, the headline of this post. I love the sound of tubes, have owned tons of tube equipment and yet – I have never designed a tube piece ever. And add to that mystery the fact that when I design a piece of equipment I design for myself. I don’t ever […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. Few things in life are as satisfying as an aha! moment: the solving of a tough problem, the solution to a puzzle, getting your stereo system dialed in. One of the more common aha! moments for people is when they try easing up on speaker toe in. Most speakers don’t want […]
In our ongoing series on class D amps and listener fatigue I made the point (hopefully) that the input stage is a critical path element in the chain – because if you can’t get this part right then everything else that follows only contributes to making things worse. It’s like putting bad gas in […]
Paul McGowan writes: I have now officially been accused of “defending digital” in the face of overwhelming evidence that analog sounds better. How dare I? Let me suggest that there are three things I will passionately defend in audio – and digital isn’t one of them. The truth. We may not like to look at […]
Paul McGowan: My friend Robert sent me a link to a great article on how music affects the brain in the New York Times. It’s well worth the read should you be as interested in the subject as I am. What it shows is the same mechanisms at work we use for figuring out all […]
Our quick response to these questions would be to treat the cause rather than the symptoms – we’ve seen many examples of this in our lives and intuitively the answer seems obvious – but does it apply to our rooms? Should we be running digital correction, processors, equalizers to force our systems to work within […]
A lot of people love the sound of horns. I am not one of them.I do love some of the qualities they present: high efficiency, terrific dynamic range, dynamic contrasts and great transient speed. I do not love their tonal characteristics. Cup your hands around your mouth and speak – this is what horns do […]
We’re discussing audio blocking capacitors; elements in the signal path that our music has to run through to get to our ears. These capacitors block DC and let AC pass through – AC being the essential element of music – DC is needed for things to work but we do not want it in our […]
In a comment on my posting about voicing high end electronics the question was asked “Is there only one ideal voicing?” Great question and here’s the entire quote. “And then it also depends on the venue and seat in the venue what is the sound you are looking for. I recall Gordon Holt’s review of […]
ARQuint writes: “As one of those writers who regularly refers to “layered depth”, I would love to ring in here. When I attend orchestra concerts, my preferred seats are on the ground floor, typically somewhere around Row I to R. This is where my wife and I sit for our Philadelphia Orchestra subscription, and what […]
Microphonics. Certainly not the only reason, but clearly the most important. Microphonics is the tendency of something to act like a microphone; picking up and reproducing sounds it “hears”. The sound producer is, of course, our loudspeakers – which is why headphones and their associated equipment are far less sensitive and needful of vibration dampers. […]
Paul McGowan writes: There’s increasing evidence that rhymes, poems, meter and cadence in stories were created not because they are beautiful but because they helped us keep the words straight before the advent of written language. It is how our civilization kept important lessons, histories, messages and stories intact without writing anything down. Imagine any […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. It’s not always easy to separate fact from fiction because few things in life are black and white enough to make simple judgments. For example, years ago a young technician who became a reviewer, Enid Lumley, drove three and a half hours to PS Audio headquarters to report a discovery she […]
There appears to be an increasing customer frustration level in all sectors of business towards errors in products and services, reported through customer feedback, and the company’s response time to fix those errors. Customer expectation levels for faster error correction, perhaps even elimination of errors, appear to be rising exponentially. Here’s the interesting thing: all […]
Paul McGowan writes: When we first started PS Audio back in the dark ages of the early 1970′s there was no such things as email, the World Wide Web or, for that matter, personal computers either. The IBM PC was launched a decade after PS Audio was founded and the computers of the day were […]
Paul McGowan On a recent pilgrimage to Arnie Nudell’s home (founder of Infinity and Genesis) to have a power amplifier shootout, I was struck by a comment he made to me about the way the system sounded (which was nothing short of magnificent). He correctly pointed out that the sound was so real you could […]
Zero calories? Went to cook some scrambled eggs this morning and first sprayed the pan with one of those spray oils. Always conscious of my weight I checked the calorie content: zero. Zero? Really? It is, after all, oil and oil is NOT zero calories. Turns out the agency that regulates the measurement standards has […]
Paul McGowan: One of our readers made an interesting observation. He writes: “selecting a record, cleaning that record, clamping the record, starting the motor, cleaning the stylus, cueing up the cartridge and sitting down to listen prepared me to listen in a way that a few mouse clicks or screen taps doesn’t. I’d made a […]
In the early 70′s Stan (The “S” in PS) and I only made phono preamplifiers. They had no controls, just a turntable input and a set of RCA outputs. Designed to go into the auxiliary inputs of the user’s preamplifier. But that was never how we used it. It was impossible for us to design […]