PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I think that by this time in our lives we no longer believe in Santa Clause, the Easter bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Like the myths of our youth, old tropes that we might have picked up when we first started our journey down the path of high-end audio can […]
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PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan And for that matter, how can same-measuring-anything sound different? The answer lies in a couple of areas. First, we do not measure all parameters that impact sound quality. In fact, as you will see below, we miss some of the most important opportunities for quantifying performance. Second, even if we […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Speaker designer Chris Brunhaver shared with me a funny YouTube video. Check out the Knob Feel channel. Probably worth one or two quick views for a good laugh. However, it does bring to mind the importance of feel. I doubt many of us are immune to the touchy-feely aspects of high-end audio. […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Back in the 90s, when we first started investigating the importance of AC power, we were shocked to find major sonic changes when running our equipment’s AC power through a conditioner. Relative to plugging straight into the wall AC socket, running the AC through a passive line conditioner we immediately […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Purity is defined as freedom from adulteration or contamination. In other words, pure is free from anything other than itself. Pure water, pure air, pure sound. So what happens when we use impure methods such as EQ to achieve sonic purity? Should we be branded as heretics? I recently ran into this […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I am guessing a number of people believe that to qualify as high-end audio gear means it must be expensive. I want to argue the opposite. The true meaning of high-end audio has nothing to do with price and everything to do with performance. That the highest performance gear is […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the importance of lower impedance in the AC line voltage. I mentioned that lowering the impedance is far more important than cleaning up the AC line noise (a subject for yet another post as this goes against nearly all the conventional wisdom). I got a […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan After all these decades of building phono stages, I am still confused. Why didn’t turntable manufacturers build phono stages into their turntables in the same way CD player manufacturers built DACs into their transports? I suppose one of the answers might be that most turntable manufacturers made neither arms nor […]
Geoffrey – what is your response to the statement ‘How many channels do you think it takes to make a music listener happy; One. Mono’s fine. I’ve never heard anybody bitch about Louis Armstrong, saying, “I would enjoy it if it were only stereo” Now this question is interesting from several perspectives and I’m going […]
Dear Colin, PSU caps. There are two (2) large rectangular caps at the ac inlet of the PSU of my DIY amp. They are labeled as such; 0.1uF 250V~X2. What does the X2 mean? Yeah I know, stupid question, but I’m at least looking for a intelligent answer and seeing all the past Colin’s Clinic […]
Hi Colin. I love your ‘clinic’. Neil promised that you might be offering education for us novices. So may I ask – have you ever thought about using braided hose to run your interconnects. I am talking about type usually found as brake lines on motorbikes and car braking systems, i was messing around with […]
We often think of the revealing nature of a great system as a double-edged sword: wonderful recordings sound better while poor ones sound worse. The idea of a system’s ability to magnifying a recording’s good and bad points is problematic when it comes to simply enjoying the music. This is why a lot of folks […]
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 […]
Hello experts. I have used audiophile fuses for years in various equipment without problem, generally appreciative of sound quality improvement. Recently, I’ve encountered problems with audiophile fuses blowing in my Coincident Turbo 845SE amplifier. At this point I’ve had two failures of Synergistic Red Quantum 6.3a 250v sloblo fuses in this amp. Recently I discovered […]
THEY SAY: Argentum company produces and distributes audiovisual cabling systems. Argentum’s wiring is a spectrum of knowledge in the field of empirical and universal principles of physics, chemistry and engineering, and technology of their own. Developed and implemented innovative technologies and maintaining technological regimes are a guarantee for the products Argentum high quality standards of […]
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?
Dear Colin, I have just fitted stock 2R7 Panasonic 0.1% metal film resistors to replace the “green” 2R2 wirewounds in series with the Millennium tweeters in my WD25Tex speakers. I expected a change ( a bit warmer) but was not prepared for such a drastic change – is this due to the 0,5R increase or […]
What is damping factor and more so what is the major influence for it ? Aanswers on a postcard please ..or just leave a simple reply Real question is how does one maintain or create the tube sound in a transistor amplifier ? Dip in (and then out) HERE
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO While emailing back and forth with several new members of PS Audio’s HiFi Family it became apparent they weren’t aware of our podcast, Ohm’s Law. In fact, turns out they had yet to everlisten to a podcast of any kind. This is foreign to me. I listen to podcasts daily and find […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO Over on the PS Audio forums, there’s a thread about cable lifters. You can read it by clicking this link. Elevating the speaker cables off the floor works to improve the sound. Should you run out and grab a set of cable lifters today? Much depends on the state of your […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO If we believe analog is superior to digital or vice versa, we tend to gravitate toward other groups that believe the same thing. It seems true in politics, stereos, cars, and perhaps even stamp collecting. We’re looking for affirmational support that we made the right choice. Newbies to our hobby […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO In yesterday’s post, I gave a bit of background on our path at PS Audio of increasing power transformer sizing. Quite by accident, we had found that oversizing the power transformers in our products delivered audibly superior performance. It was the increased wire gauge with its subsequent lowering of impedance that […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO: When we built Music Room One we made a point of electrifying it properly: Dedicated circuits with heavy gauge wire. Had we the time and budget we would have also used grounded conduit as a shield against noise. The importance of a proper AC foundation cannot be understated. The two properties we […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO It doesn’t take long to figure out the importance of AC power, and perhaps no device can better demonstrate the advantages of perfect AC than a Power Plant. I wonder how many of the thousands of Power Plant owners across the globe really understand what’s important in power—why their AC […]