Interacting with a front panel has always been important, but rarely how we judge a piece of equipment. Even the klunkiest front panel layouts were tolerated if the unit’s sound quality was up to snuff. The user interface took a distant second to performance. As we rush headlong into the age of the user interface […]
AUDIO The Insider
Found 438 results
Colin – can we get meaningful measurements of power line noise? Is the noise too low-level to measure without exorbitantly expensive equipment? What equipment is required? Outside of laboratories, who has it? We buy all sorts of devices to clean up power. So why can’t we measure the noise that’s there and target it? Wayne […]
In 1976 Swedish recording engineer, Gert Palmcrantz recorded live to analog tape a Swedish jazz group featuring Arne Domnérus, alto sax, clarinet; Bengt Hallberg, piano; Lars Erstrand, vibes; Georg Riedel, bass; and Egil Johansen, drums. That album, Jazz at The Pawnshop was released as a two-record set by Proprius Records on 180-gram vinyl in 1977 (Sony and Philip’s introduction […]
When you are watching a live show you can see the musicians and hear their individual instruments. The visuals add clarity to what you are hearing. Listening on your stereo system loses that visual element but in exchange adds a proximity advantage. You are now closer to the musicians than you could have ever been […]
Two of the most valuable tools we have at Octave Records are a pair of Audeze headphones and the FR30 loudspeakers. Putting the headphones on while setting up a recording mix is an incredibly important tool that allows us to hear deep into the music as if looking through a magnifying glass before switching to […]
Ever wonder why harmonic distortion figures include the word total? Surely we don’t benefit from knowing partial harmonic distortion. Or do we? Harmonic distortion happens when higher frequencies that are not part of the music are added to the signal when passing through our equipment chain. If we take a single tone, say 1kHz, then inevitably when we […]
VIEW HERE
https://www.psaudio.com/askpaulvideo/music-through-pro-monitors/
This is an interesting question. We’ve all experienced how different our systems sound when we first turn them on. Cold they sound like their temperature: stiff, sluggish, perhaps a bit sterile. Warmed up for an hour or so we become much more engaged. On the other side of the proverbial coin is the opposite: too […]
We learn from very early on to protect ourselves from pain and unpleasantness. If something is too loud we cover our ears and move away. On a more moderate scale, we do the same thing when listening to music. If something is too piercing, bright, screechy, or objectionable our ears tighten up as a form […]
VIEW HERE
The more I get involved in the recording arts the more I become convinced simple is key. Yes, we can get a bit more intimate with close miking, and we can retrieve more detail but at what cost? Simple stereo miking done correctly has a magic to it. That magic I refer to seems to […]
One of my YouTube viewers writes: “Paul, love almost all your videos. but. I think TOTAL ABSORTION behind the speakers is crucial. Reflection behind the speakers is just noise. PERIOD. WORST CASE. A glass window in the imaging space. PERIOD. Sorry.” This is part of the old live-end vs. dead-end debate in rooms (the actual […]
It might not make much sense when we see an amplifier’s frequency range specified as 10Hz to 60kHz. After all, this kind of extreme frequency range is unusable to humans. Our hearing is limited to 20Hz and 20kHz (and that’s on a good day). But here’s what might be missing. To be flat at the […]
VIEW HERE
VIEW HERE
What a great word. noun:1. The quality of being easily shaped or moulded.2. The adaptability of an organism to changes in its environment or differences between its various habitats. Plasticity very much describes our ever-adapting ear/brain mechanism. Unlike our test equipment which we rely upon to be solid and unchanging, our ear/brain mechanism is constantly changing, […]
Paul McGowan writes: When evaluating a new piece of gear—perhaps that new Power Plant, DAC, cable, or speaker—what’s the first track of music you turn to? Is it always the same? Does it vary from type to type of gear? In my experience we all have a few go-to pieces of music we rely upon […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO The first time I hear a new system that has yet to be dialed in I have to decide if it is close enough for a bit of polish or so far off we need to start from scratch. We just went through this exercise at PS Audio. Ever since […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO: Sorting out recording qualities from the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of choices of high-resolution DSD offerings can be a challenge. We go to a label’s offerings and read the blurb, listen to the sampler, and then roll the dice. More often than not, high-resolution DSD releases were not recorded in DSD. […]
Hi guys…this question I’m going to pose is not intended to russel up anyone’s feathers, moreover, I ask this question because I have (in recent years) noticed a significant change in the downward trend of attitude/outlook/customer service/passion/integrity/motivation/product knowledge/politeness, and so many other elements from the very people who are serving to sell companies products to […]