Paul McGowan writes: The damping factor of a power amplifier is a metric used to describe the amplifier’s ability to control the loudspeaker. It’s basically calculated by dividing the amplifier’s output impedance into the loudspeaker’s input impedance when the speaker is operating near resonance. It’s a really important number to know when you’re making a […]
Paul McGowan
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Paul McGowan: Radio station engineer Jim Mussel invited me to his home to hear what I couldn’t at the station, so poor the Quadraflex monitors were. Jim assured me that there were better speakers, better electronics and “something I’ve never heard before” awaited my arrival at his home. We both lived in Santa Maria California, […]
Paul McGowan … In a recent post we began the story of how MultiWave was invented. We left off at the point where I started questioning what was so sacred about the 60Hz frequency that comes out of the wall socket and started experimenting with higher frequencies in an attempt to “increase” the size of […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. Change can be tough for me, especially when the means to an end make no sense. Like green pens on CD edges, demagnetizers, magic stones, voodoo dots, resonators aligning the earth to my stereo system. Ideas presented to me that I cannot make sense of get put on hold. Sometimes indefinitely. […]
My experience in the power amplifier shootout surprised quite a few of you. Some wrote and questioned why I would publicly announce our new power amplifier wasn’t as good as the $10,000 tube amp we compared it to (no names please). Others wrote in support of my forthright approach. I guess I would suggest that […]
Paul McGowan writes: A recent post got quite a few of you riled up when I suggested a guitar pickup is just as sensitive to transients and subtle details and produces the same “simple” electrical signals we need to record as even a “complex” microphone and exonerated the recording chain from blame in our loss […]
Digital has been quite a revolution for me. I remember the first time I heard the term email. What was the E in front of mail for? Electronic mail? That’d never go anywhere I thought. If instant communication was email’s goal what was wrong with the telephone? I shook my head and went back to pounding […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. Credit for the 1904 invention of the vacuum tube belongs to John Ambrose Fleming, but the device we associate with amplifiers came three years later when Lee De Forest gave us the three-terminal “Audion” tube, a crude form of what was to become the triode. There was a time, certainly in […]
So let me ask you a question. Why would those of us that love vinyl prefer a vinyl pressing of a digital recording? Many new vinyl releases from today’s musician’s are recorded in the studio digitally, as opposed to using an analog tape machine, then mastered and released from analog masters created from the master […]
Paul McGowan writes: We’ve taken a simplistic look at recordings and shown what’s probably obvious to most – that recording and reproducing simple electrical signals like those out of a guitar is rather easy and something we need not question about preserving. Quite a number of you pointed out that seems like a rather trivial […]
Paul McGowan writes: I wrote a long post about a bit of high-end history covering the invention of the separate DAC for high-end audio. I promised another about a future idea that might be interesting. First, a primer. A DAC is a digital to analog converter – its name describing exactly what it does. […]
My friend and reviewer Michael Fremer loves his iPod when traveling – but he doesn’t think a lot of digital audio – preferring vinyl instead. Here’s what’s interesting: Michael digitally records his favorite music from his turntable and transfers to his iPod. Indeed, I can attest to the wonderful sound he gets. Does this mean […]
Paul McGowan: The dawn of the CD era began in the early 1980′s and at that time there were initially only two CD players mass marketed: Sony and Phillips made both and each were marketed under multiple brand names. Soon after, Yamaha followed with their own licensed version but so far no high-end audio company […]
Paul McGowan writes: In our quest to figure out why we might need a big power amplifier vs. a smaller power amplifier I’ve mentioned a lot of numbers: some scary big. Many of you have written to me that the huge wattage numbers I’ve been mentioning don’t really stack up with your real world experience […]
Paul McGowan … Many of my readers have asked for some setup help in these posts and what works for me is to simply throw one in here and there as the mood strikes. Perhaps one of the most fundamental setup procedures is speaker and listener placement in any given room. You have to have […]
Paul McGowan writes: We’re all looking for audio truth—getting as close to the live event as technically possible. So, why is it we tend to install equipment and systems that offer an artificially sweetened sound? Do we believe all recordings should be lush, romantic, and easy on our ears? Surely that wouldn’t be honest sound. […]
Paul McGowan ….. I’ve finally gotten the turntable setup going into the new speaker system and have been, as of late, playing a lot of vinyl through it. The setup I am using is a Clear Audio Master Solution with their carbon fiber arm and a Denon 103D moving coil cartridge set to 100 Ohms […]
Paul McGowan: My note about being open to trying out a preamp between the DAC and power amp brought a lot of attention and many great suggestions. One of the repeated suggestions is to simply stick a buffer stage at the output of the DAC and play the system with and without the buffer. While […]
Paul McGowan writes: In yesterday’s post we we lamented the shift away from the neighborhood dealer who provided our advice, information, opinions and service. There are a number of reasons why this has taken place and one we’ve not yet touched upon is how we access information and form opinions today – it’s most certainly […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. There are plenty of terms that don’t seem to fit together: literal interpretation, out like a light, self-help group, and my all time favorite, open secret. That said, let me add another: hearing aids for high-end audio. While the two terms together might be a head scratcher, there’s good news ahead. […]
What if you had just received your brand new P20 Power Plant, opened its packing box with high expectations of seeing your beautiful new product, but instead found something else: A small package you are asked to open first. Before you unseal the mysterious letter-sized envelope you notice there’s something lumpy inside and now your […]
Podcast is a linguistic blend of two words: iPod and broadcast. It was first coined by British technologist Ben Hammersley and it’s since become somewhat of a household name in the same way tissues became Kleenex. I have found myself rather addicted to these informative and entertaining means of consuming words. My favorites are NPR’s […]
Paul McGowan: There are two types of engineering directions if we take a broad stroke view: forward and reverse. Forward engineering might look like engineering a new product from a simple idea from scratch. Reverse engineering would look like the opposite: start with something that already works and take it apart to figure out how […]
Paul McGowan writes: Just because you observe something doesn’t mean you understand how to measure and repeat it. We get confused a lot between the observations we make, the measurements we use to try and quantify those observations and the conclusions we draw from it all. For example, when a listener observes a change in […]