The very term luxury defines whatever it is added to as unnecessary. Air and water are necessities. Love and affection are luxuries. But while many would argue it’s the luxuries that make life worth living, I would extend that to subwoofers make stereos worth listening. Ok, that’s a stretch. Clearly, stereos are worth listening even […]
AUDIO The Insider
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For jitter to be audible it has to be unpredictably late or early. (If we know the data is always late or early by the same measure then it’s easy to compensate). The reference for our digital audio data is called a clock. With every clock cycle, the digital audio system looks to see if there is […]
We all have our personal standards by which we determine whether or not something lives up to our expectations. When I play a new track of music I expect a certain level of musicality, transparency, tonal accuracy, and overall believability. If I listen without any preconceived expectations I can either accept or reject the new […]
A high-end retailer writes: I know the answer, but that’s not the point. What I think, feel, perceive and believe re audiophile issues is, realistically, irrelevant to my customers. Yes of course they want my know how, the brands I represent, encouragement, enlightenment and more … but they base their buying decisions on their emotions […]
This post will most likely stand the hair up on the back of EE necks because it’ll be riddled with inaccuracies I will use to make a point about why devices sound differently in audio circuits. What I have to share hopefully will be interesting to both the uninformed as well as those knowledgable in […]
In yesterday’s post we mentioned a Sheffield Direct To Disc recording and several readers asked me just what that was. It was the most direct method of recording possible before the advent of digital and interestingly enough it was a throwback to the original recording technique. Perhaps a bit of history is in order. When […]
If for some reason your power amplifier puts DC into your loudspeaker you’ll wind up letting the magic blue smoke out and killing your loudspeaker. ”Magic blue” smoke is engineering humor: it’s what we jokingly say when a component blows up and smoke spews from its innards – “oops, we let the magic blue smoke […]
Is this topic relevant to you? This series will focus on how to help a buyer or potential buyer of audio /hifi equipment / stereos make better quality decisions. I’ll come on to ‘quality’ decisions shortly. However I need to clarify who might find this series irrelevant. Easy – anyone who is a stereo equipment […]
It’s probably not a bad idea. NAS is an acronym for Network Attached Storage—a hard drive accessible over a home network. For years, NAS were shunned by most of us (including me) because they were slow and a pain in the keester. But, like all things digital, over time they’ve gotten easy and fast to […]
For the most part, a dedicated subwoofer output on a receiver or integrated exists because of old-school habits. Long ago, at the beginning of the subwoofer era, there were no built-in crossovers. Subs came in two flavors: an unpowered or powered woofer in a box. If the first the user had to supply a power […]
Geoffrey ….. why is there such diversity between audiophile values and the audio engineering establishment’s values? I’m not sure there is – indeed, I would argue that, more often than not, audio engineers are just audiophiles who have taken their interest to the next level and gone pro. Perhaps I should start by suggesting that […]
Geoffrey Owen: Somewhat like Terry Wogan and his listener, I feel my first article secured one noble reader. My hope now is to double that number in this follow-up. In my last piece, I suggested the audio industry was populated by three distinct stereotypes, these being gods, gurus and mystics; the first two I’ve covered […]
Previously … Welcome back. Here are the three topics identified from yesterday that I’ll be – time permitting – hoping to cover today: How to understand how you arrived in such a situation and thus how to avoid a repetition, How to firmly and unaggressively regain control Tactics that turn the demonstration toward your objectives. […]
When people come to hear the IRSV system in Music Room One they’re always in awe of the number of drivers: 36 tweeters, 12 midranges, 6 woofers per side. Most loudspeakers have one of each: tweeter, woofer, perhaps a midrange. On a speaker like the IRS, the duties are shared. Each tweeter handles 1/36th of […]
So, following on from the previous part of this series, why 1976? Quite simply, it was my first foray into buying an audio system. I discovered first hand the need for proper research prior to visiting a retailer or more accurately, a certain type of retailer – and the realisation that in so doing I […]
Some speakers just sound great while others appeal not. What makes the difference in the way speakers sound?
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO: It’s a fresh notion but, for me, I doubt I will ever abandon the tried and true. Who is it we’re communicating with? If we’re describing our system to a perfect stranger then I doubt either term will have much meaning. Over the years I have seen too many glazed […]
Welcome back. Hopefully you’ve read the previous two parts.So, where are we going with this? I ask on your behalf because of course whether to accompany me (and everyone else on this path) is a decision in itself. So to help you reach a quality decision then here are a few extracts from future parts […]
There are many multi-driver speakers, but few that go floor to ceiling like the IRSV. Floor to ceiling multi-driver speakers are called a Line Source. What’s counter-intuitive about a line source is how specific the imaging can be. With that many drivers, one would think the image would be tall, rather than lifelike, when the […]
A few readers have asked me to back off on being uber technical and get back to writing more about sound and high end audio from a listener’s perspective rather than a designer’s and I’ll definitely do that but I did want to finish up on our little series about DACS. One thing to remember […]
An inconvenient truth – rarely acknowledged I have a great interest in vintage equipment. From my retailing perspective it’s an inconvenient fact of life that occasionally, vintage equipment sounds every bit as good as brand new equipment and for far less money too! And then, the value. When you take into account the fact that […]
Some years backI wrote about a new power amp technology that simply blew my skirt up to the point where I have cleansed the listening room of anything but this product to amplify the Maggies. The decision to consider doing this took about 10 seconds: I knew immediately this was it. I then spent nearly […]
Whenever I hit the road to attend a HiFi show or help set up a system I make sure I am armed to the teeth with my reference material. Going into a stereo setup without my trusted media would be akin to that old nightmare of showing up at a cocktail party naked. Our reference […]
I have seen some crazy stuff in the 40 plus years I have been around audiophiles and high-end systems. Exotic room conditioning, trinkets aplenty, cables the size of my leg, claims of subatomic effects, components that sound different depending on their earthly orientation, low-frequency waves said to resonate with the Earth. In fact, I could […]