People / Paul McGowan > guru

Paul McGowan writes: All DACs are not equal yet many of today’s most popular digital to analog converters are based on the same off-the-shelf chipset like those from ESS, Cirrus Logic, or Analog Devices. Yet those DACs using identical chips often sound as if cut from very different cloth. What makes them different? We might get […]

Paul McGowan writes: Most people refer to their physical copies of music as collections, for that is what they typically are. Very few large collections of music are well organized. Take my own, for example. In Music Room One I have 6 shelves of vinyl and 30 of CDs and SACDs. Vinyl is organized by the […]

Paul McGowan writes: Sometimes it’s the little things that make something special. A smile, just at the right moment, or perhaps a helping hand when one wasn’t expected. When I think about what makes a piece of audio equipment special it’s often the little unnoticed touches that, together, make a product worth owning. Take for […]

Paul McGowan writes: Stan Warren and I started PS Audio more than 40 years ago. Two enterprising young guys hell-bent to change the world. Stan moved on to other pastures. I’ve been at it ever since. I think what has always driven the PS team remains the same: using technology in clever ways to move […]

Paul McGowan writes: My friend Andy sent me this link to the new Samsung 2TB solid state drive that’s smaller than a business card, launched this morning at CES. That’s amazing. A sold state drive capable of storing well over 2000 complete albums–and it’s smaller than a business card. Bit banging. It’s a term used […]

Paul McGowan writes: Satisfaction? Don’t feel badly, the Stones apparently couldn’t either. But is satisfaction the end game? And what happens after you achieve it? Are you ready for more? Something better? I don’t know about you, but I tend to categorize my achievements into three groups. The first is short, repetitive tasks with known outcomes, […]

Paul McGowan writes: It’s easy to ignore–often criticize–the hard won victories of creative people designing leading edge technology. In fact, it’s one of the double edged swords of our abundantly-connected society that empowers readers with just enough information to miss the bigger picture. And this is part of the problem I find in helping unravel the […]

Paul McGowan writes: There must not be enough worms crawling around so I figure I’ll just go ahead and open a fresh can. Keeps it fun that way. Why is it we’re convinced we can hear changes in polarity, or MQA vs. non MQA, or the difference between CD and vinyl—but find it hard to accept […]

Paul McGowan writes: Turning a good idea into a company is not easy. The devil, they say, is in the details; something Stan and I found to be true. In this video, Part II of the History of PS Audio, we learn how two wild-eyed hippie audiophiles turned a phono preamplifier into a business that today […]

Paul McGowan writes: There are many great mysteries in the world: how the pyramids were built, the Easter Island Moai, why whatever hair I lose on my head seems to pop up somewhere else, and I am sure there are plenty more. There are two great mysteries in audio that are currently bugging me and, […]

Sometimes subwoofers are so intrusive it feels like we should be adjusting them for each and every track of music. How do we get around that desire and achieve a proper setup in our home audio systems? Watch Now Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan:  Dave Paananen, who directs our engineering, and I were in Music Room One auditioning a couple of changes to circuitry recently. We were trying to figure out which, of several types of op amps, were more musically correct. Of course we do this by simply gain matching and then listening to the same […]

Paul McGowan writes: Solar energy is clean power uncontaminated by neighbors and industry as are our powerlines. So, would using solar energy to power our high-end audio systems be a good idea? How does it work? All will be answered in this short video by PS Audio CEO Paul McGowan. Watch Now  

Originally published 2015 Paul McGowan writes: Now that the Infinity IRS system is installed and I am listening to it I thought I might give you an update as to how things are going. First I’ll describe the audio chain being used.  It’s right now about as simple as it can be.  For a source […]

Paul McGowan writes: Most of us take our systems personally. We’re proud of our achievements. We’ve worked hard learning, listening, and setting up. It’s the rare music lover that doesn’t feel a sense of pride and accomplishment. I think that’s awesome, and I’ll be the first to bust my buttons over the performance of Music […]

Paul McGowan writes: We’ve all heard of S/PDIF and AES/EBU but not many realize how those formats work and why they are inferior to what’s at their core, I2S. Paul explains this somewhat complex subject in simple terms anyone can understand and its knowledge worth absorbing. Watch Now  

Paul McGowan writes ….. I have never understood the purpose of speaker stands for small two-way loudspeakers. If you’re not going to use them on a shelf, as intended, what sense do they make? A small speaker box struggles with bass—it’s just physics. Sacrificing music’s full range for a small box only makes sense in […]

Paul McGowan writes: We’ve been spending a lot of time posting about the state of high-end retailers.  I want to let this subject rest for a while and percolate through everyone’s minds.  I will leave you with this thought and model. I hope I am not speaking out of school when I tell you that […]

Paul McGowan writes: Our brains edit what we see and hear like a film director’s viewfinder. You’re probably familiar with this concept every time you take a picture of a distant mountain, seascape, or harvest moon and are disappointed with the outcome. What your vision records is entirely different than what the camera sees. Our brains […]

Paul McGowan writes: There are very few pieces of hifi kit that won’t benefit from a great deal of care and attention. But one benefits far more than anything else I can think of. The turntable. Vinyl’s playback is almost entirely dependent on proper setup. Getting the arm and cartridge combination playing nice together is […]

Paul McGowan:  In our comments section, in response to my post FOMO, there is a good and healthy debate going on about the differences in sound quality between DSD and PCM. In one of the comments a fellow manufacturer’s online rant “proving” that PCM is as good as DSD is cited. The article includes a […]