In Stereophile Magazine’s opening section, As we see it, author Jim Austin has a little title at the top of the page that says, “There are as many opinions as there are experts”.
How true.
Every expert in our field has what I like to call a point of view—their opinion of the best way to get from here to there and why they chose that destination in the first place.
Take my long-held conviction that recording the analog output from a microphone preamp is best when captured with DSD. I can spout off how this conclusion was reached, from as far back as my introduction to the idea by our own Gus Skinas, Ted Smith, and Cookie Marenco, to years of experimenting, listening, testing, and verifying.
All that work has helped me form a point of view that guides my journey through the recording process.
I haven’t enough fingers to count those that argue the exact opposite.
Or, take my heretical point of view that breaks with a long-held tradition that, once captured in DSD, it is best to analog low pass filter the DSD through a DAC for mixing and mastering.
Our friends, the Murrisons (of Bit Perfect fame), have devised a phase-perfect digital low pass filter that performs the same function without ever leaving the digital domain and suffering the slight degradation of the DAC, the miles of circuitry in the analog mixing board, and a return trip through another A/D converter.
This new all-digital technology sounds to my ears remarkably better than the tried-and-true method of converting back and forth between digital and analog.
Few agree with me and most are unwilling to even entertain the idea.
“There are as many opinions as there are experts.”
Thankfully we all have a point of view that differs. From these differing viewpoints come what we call progress. It’s how we go from “that’s batshit crazy” to “that’s just how you do it”.
Progress.
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO
