Paul McGowan writes: Do you remember applying green paint to CD edges? Placing steel VPI bricks on top of equipment? Placing small pillows in each corner of the ceiling? Using a tape demagnetizer on CD’s? Pointing a static zap gun at LP’s before playing them? I do. All these tweaks worked but I don’t use […]
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Paul McGowan: How many tweaks and improver gadgets do we buy with the claim of being better? Most of them. But do they really make things “better”? Better than what? I buy organically grown food whenever I can. It’s more expensive, but it’s better. Better than what? Let’s face it. Tweaks, improvers, organically grown food […]
Have you ever wondered why there are so many different sample rates and why? The compact disc samples at 44.1kHz/16 bits. But then there’s these other rates like 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz. Wow, that’s a lot and the spacing doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. How did we get to these numbers […]
All rooms are reflective, bouncing sound off walls, ceilings, and floor. But those reflections are unnatural and never existed in the recording in the first place. Wouldn’t a totally dead room be better sounding?
Engineers don’t yet know how to measure all we can hear on a resolving stereo system but we know a lot. What are the measurements that tell us what sounds good and what does not? Watch Now ▸
Paul McGowan The notion of using one amplifier perfectly matched to the tweeter and another to the woofer made such elegant sense. Tubes for the top end, solid state grunt for the bottom. Brilliant. That was at a time when the choices in amplifiers were limited. Big, powerful solid state amps sounded pretty poor reproducing […]
Paul McGowan writes …. With all the ranting and raving I do about the importance of subwoofers you’d think we were in the business of selling them. But, we’re not. My passion for certain subjects knows few bounds. I understand people’s hesitations with them: the added clutter of multiple boxes, PITA to set up, expensive, unnecessary. […]
Paul McGowan Is it ethical to spend time at your local stereo dealer and then buy online at a lower price? This question is at the core of the situation dealers and customers find themselves in today and you might be surprised at Paul’s answer. Watch Now
When audio signals pass through a capacitor they sound different depending on which kind of capacitor is in use. Why? And, for that matter, what is a capacitor and how does it work?
Setting up a subwoofer in a high-end system can be darned tricky. Is there an easy and quick way to get it right, first time, every time? You bet there is and leave it to Paul to explain how Watch Now
Paul McGowan writes: In an earlier post we talked about how most of us aspire to have a dedicated listening room but don’t have the real estate to build one. Instead, we have the shared living room to work with. Problem with this is the need for the loudspeakers to be placed 1/3 the way […]
From the archives: I am visiting the high-end show in Tokyo at the moment and last night, between demonstrations of the system, I was wandering the halls of the show when the strains of one of my all time favorite operas came drifting down the hall. La Boheme, as performed by Renata Tebaldi in 1951 […]
If you have a combination of old and new equipment is it possible to mix and match for best performance and synergy? Or, should you stick with one manufacturer’s vision of what’s best? Watch Now
Paul McGowan writes: In my post “Through and open window” I mentioned that if I am walking down the street and hear a piano through an open window I know immediately if that’s the sound of a real piano or a recorded one. Odd that we can do this even from affar and through a […]
Paul McGowan writes: We discussed the effects of depth of soundstage, characterized by some as “layered depth” to describe the spacing in the horizontal plane that we hear in our high end audio systems. I mentioned that there is yet another dimension to the depth aspect of our systems, that of height. The height of […]
When I peer into my camera’s ground glass I am intent on one thing. Sharp focus. When I check the clock for my 9:45 meeting I focus on the second hand and ignore the hour. I can tell you if I am late or early but not what time it is. When we narrow our […]
Last week was the AXPONA high-end audio show in Schaumburg, a suburb of Chicago. PS Audio was there as well as hundreds of other manufacturers. As always, I had my trusty video camera at the ready and produced a 17-minute video tour with interviews of manufacturers and views of the show and rooms. Here’s where […]
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 […]
Here we go again. Do silver cables sound different than copper? Sure they do, and that’s bound to stir up an entire new hornet’s nest. But, it needs to be said because it’s the truth. Watch Now Audio cables / buy / sell / info and … more
In the more than 40 years I have been building audio products my enthusiasm for what we do has never waned. In fact, quite the opposite. I wake up excited about each new day and another opportunity to spend time with our community and team at PS. I am one lucky guy. And sometimes I […]
We should be at the point in our subwoofer quest to kick back and enjoy our new found extra octave or two of bass – and what a great thing that is once you’re in tune with it. I wanted to touch briefly on matching the “speed” of the subwoofer with that of your main […]
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 […]
Have you ever wondered what recording studio engineers use for monitors? I’ll tell you – probably nothing you’d have in your home or system. For the most part they are anything but high-end. A few loudspeaker manufacturers proudly show us their products in the studios and mastering rooms of the world, but this is done […]