192kHz: What’s this fuss about it?

Have you ever wondered why there are so many different sample rates and why? The compact disc samples at 44.1kHz/16 bits. But then there’s these other rates like 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz. Wow, that’s a lot and the spacing doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. How did we get to these numbers […]

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MUSIC: The 12-note wonder

PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I have always found it intriguing that the 12 musical notes in Western music, also known as the chromatic scale, can be combined and arranged in various ways to create infinite melodies and chord progressions. The notes can be played at different pitches, rhythms, and durations and can be used […]

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UNDERSTANDING: Balancing EQ and ketchup

PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan In just about every commercial recording studio in the world, (and most every recording you hear) the practice of EQ’ing is commonplace: correcting problems like unwanted background noise, microphone imbalances, and other anomalies that affect the clarity and quality of sound. Unfortunately, like ketchup, salt, pepper, and other condiments, it […]

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WHY: It’s why so many legitimate reviews of equipment today express an opinion on sound and ignore the details of performance!

PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan And continuing our thought from a recent post, only this time in reverse, isn’t it obvious that just because something has all the right stuff it doesn’t necessarily qualify as great itself? And doesn’t this observation help explain one of the age old mysteries in audio about how something can […]

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PS AUDIO: The bipolar mirage and why it is important

Paul McGowan writes:  The easiest way to picture how a bipole loudspeaker is configured is to imagine two full range Monopole speaker boxes back-to-back.  Sound comes out of both the front and the back of the combined boxes in this configuration and, if you connect them in-phase (red to red and black to black) you […]

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Never in all my years of playing with stereos have I heard such music – the waves of singers and instruments, tympani’s gone wild – it was a truly remarkable experience

PAUL McGOWAN: ’ll continue with the story of the invention of an electronically scalable room but today wanted to tell you about something I’ve been listening to that has me running around the PS offices grabbing whomever I can to come and listen.  One of my readers wrote: “For a real sense of a massive […]

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LUNACY: I know this is lunacy to some and honestly, I don’t care.

A am utterly fascinated with cable break-in. For many people, the idea of a piece of wire breaking in or changing its audible character over time is questionable at best and for others bordering on the preposterous. And yet, cable break-in is as real as the sun rising each morning. Recently we have been assembling […]

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UNDERSTANDING: Power calcuations

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 […]

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AUDIO INSIDER

TREES FALLING ON DEAF EARS

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 […]

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UNDERSTANDING: Transient considerations

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 […]

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BIAMPING: I remember my delight the first time biamping speakers was explained to me

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 […]

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INTERCONNECT: Balanced vs. unbalanced audio

Which is the better interconnect for home audio systems? Balanced XLR or unbalanced RCA? Paul voices his opinion and explains the differences between the two and their reason for existence. Have a question you’d like Paul to answer for you? Go to https://www.psaudio.com/ask-paul/ and post it. Watch Now Paul McGowan

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AUDIO INSIDER

PASSING TRAINS: To me, it’s more like waving at a passing train. Interesting for the half-second I see a familiar face and then they are gone.

Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO I have probably spent a total of 5 minutes on social media. Facebook, Instagram, Tick Tock, and whatever new connection program out there has zero interest for me. It feels like a potential blackhole vortex waiting to suck me in and chew up my time without any obvious benefit. The […]

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DIFFERING VIEWPOINTS

Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO Let me share an interesting experience. At Octave Records, we have built a state-of-the-art mix room with the best equipment we know to exist: FR30 loudspeakers, BHK monoblocks, BHK pre, DSMK2, Audioquest Dragon cables, a pair of custom 21″ subs. Fed from Octave masters, it sounds amazing. And in Music […]

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