PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan On a good day, the limits of human hearing are said to be 20kHz. As we age, that goes down in frequency. So why, you might ask, do we expect our electronics and loudspeakers to produce frequencies well above our ability to hear them? In the case of PS Audio […]
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Capacitors are interesting components. They serve as frequency dividers, energy storage units, and DC blockers (among other things). I’ve written before about my experience so many years ago learning about capacitor bypassing—adding a smaller capacitor in parallel with a bigger one to improve the sound quality of an amp or preamp. Why is that better […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan In my recent post, Timbre, I brought up a number of examples of instruments that have unique timbre. But, one of the problems we have in evaluating how well our systems properly reproduce timbre is in the recording itself. How was it miked? What kind of player made the sound? How […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan In 1897 a former patient of Dr. John Kellog, Charles “C.W.” Post, mixed a batter of wheat and barley together then baked it in his oven. What came out was a hard brown sheet of material with a slightly sweet and nutty taste. Post then broke apart the sheet and […]
I don’t know about where you live but here in Boulder, Colorado, most every bike rider looks like they’re getting ready for the Tour de France. Is all that expensive gear effective? Does the money spent on high-tech racing clothing noticeably improve performance? If you look at the marketing pitch on this gear it reads […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan In my recent post, Timbre, I brought up a number of examples of instruments that have unique timbre. But, one of the problems we have in evaluating how well our systems properly reproduce timbre is in the recording itself. How was it miked? What kind of player made the sound? How […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I have yet to meet anyone that hasn’t been able to hear the benefits of playing music on a high-end audio system like that in Music Room II. Time and again, people unaware of what high-end audio has to offer are jaw-dropping surprised at how much better a proper high-end […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan One of our readers emailed me asking about proximity to his speakers. It was an interesting question. “As I move around the room I find the sweet spot to be 2 feet in front of my 8 foot separated speakers. Am I too close?” First, let me say I admire […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Gosh, people struggle so hard to understand that which does not make sense to them. It’s a rare person that can leap from faith. On our YouTube channel, I do my best to share with folks my experiences with what I hear, with what we hear, as a company. It’s not made […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan How many among us have true dedicated listening rooms? I’ll bet fewer than 1% of a fairly big audience. No, I think most people have their home audio systems in their shared living space. Part of the home decor, to be enjoyed by all who live in the house. In […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan For many years, the only reference I had to a shorting plug was the handmade kind we built in engineering. Here, we took an RCA connector and to its body, we soldered a wire tying its center pin to the outer shell. We made similar versions for XLR connectors. We […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan One of the most common questions I cannot answer is about matching power amps to Power Plants. It seems such an obvious question and you’d think the answer would be straight forward. But, you’d be incorrect. The problem with matching power amps to Power Plants happens because we don’t have […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan One of our readers emailed me asking about proximity to his speakers. It was an interesting question. “As I move around the room I find the sweet spot to be 2 feet in front of my 8 foot separated speakers. Am I too close?” First, let me say I admire […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Things happen whether we accept them or not, like the old question about trees making noise when they fall. What would happen if we framed the age-old question of measurements vs. subjectivity differently? Instead of stating what we cannot do—if you can’t measure it it doesn’t exist—why not ask—what can […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan My friend, Keith Howard, wrote me a wonderfully insightful note that I will share with you. END
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan There are a lot of parameters audio design engineers must consider when crafting a new amplification circuit. Chief among them is the dynamic ability of a circuit to properly reproduce transients. Transient response in an audio system refers to how quickly and accurately the system responds to changes in the […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan In a recent post, we discussed some types of distortion that are not typically part of a manufacturer’s specifications. One of those terms, slew rate, generated a bunch of questions and requests for me to explain what it is. I will do my best in as simple of terms as […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Their excitement comes from understanding the challenge of making an air piston (which is what a speaker driver is) that can start and stop in perfect synch with the instructions from your power amplifier. To accomplish that feat one would prefer a cone (the piston part) that had zero mass […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I would suggest that throughout time it’s rather commonplace to hear people discounting or dismissing the experiences of others when worldviews do not match. Sometimes that’s helpful. If I see the world as flat and declare it so, you can help me by explaining the well established facts. That’s a […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan If you had a chance to read my post of several days ago titled The Bypass Cap you might have been thinking it was about headwear. Or, you might have gotten my analogy of using a super tweeter to augment a standard tweeter. Here’s another for you. If you were to take […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Many of the products of science we take for granted were discovered by accident: penicillin, Viagra, anesthesia, the microwave oven, chewing gum, brandy, and even silly putty. The key to those discoveries lies in the inventor’s openness to observations unrelated to the original experiment. Take for example, when in 1879, […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan As a lifelong photographer, I have, over many decades, developed a practiced eye. What’s that mean? Simply that my eye/brain connections are wired to see through the camera’s viewfinder in such a way that good composition feels natural. (If you’re interested, you can see my photo gallery here). In the same way, we, as […]
Gentlemen. I have recently upgraded my Goldring 1042 moving magnet (MM) cartridge to a MC and was originally considering Denon DL-103R or Audio-Technica AT-OC9ML/II. After deeper investigation into Arm Effective Mass and Resonant Frequency due reports that the Denon only being suitable for med to high mass arms I found that my Roksan Tabriz (standard […]
Paul McGowan: Most of us think of the hot seat, sometimes better known as the Sweet Spot, as the center chair in front of our loudspeaker pair. And that would be correct. But as we begin this new year it’s instructive to open our thoughts to some new ideas. Why do we think it’s so […]