In a recent set of comments we spoke about adult children and when it is that they start to get the high-end “itch”. In my experience, it starts in their 30′s and extends into the 40′s. The desire to have something better, a step above the status quo, begins at these ages and it occurs […]
Paul McGowan
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One of our readers made an interesting observation. He writes: “selecting a record, cleaning that record, clamping the record, starting the motor, cleaning the stylus, cueing up the cartridge and sitting down to listen prepared me to listen in a way that a few mouse clicks or screen taps doesn’t. I’d made a commitment to […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. When it comes to the space we allocate for our listening area, we rarely have the luxury of choosing our room size, dimensions, ceiling height, or the floor type. For most of us, we take what we can get and hope for the best. Sometimes, for the luckiest among us, we […]
How does PS Audio deal with equipment sonic signatures? Do we purposefully use tubes and transistors to tailor the sound to some criteria?
In a post covering the invention of the vacuum tube and its principals of operation we learned that small crystals were used as the basis for radio receivers and that inventor Lee De Forest came up with an alternative to the crystals, the triode tube which others later turned into the triode vacuum tube. This […]
Paul McGowan writes: We’re moving into a series on power amplifier headroom for a couple of reasons: first I think most people really don’t understand just how much power is enough and secondly, we’re introducing a new power amplifier this summer that’s of a power level high enough to raise some eyebrows. I want to […]
Paul McGowan ….. “Dear Paul. After months of your blogs, I am finally confused. You say that the sound of a 44.1K 16 bit cd copy of a vinyl record is indistinguishable from the vinyl record. Yet, in my experience, the sound of a superbly recorded vinyl record has greater ambience, depth etc. than a […]
Paul McGowan writes: My favorite loudspeaker box for bass is a sealed one; not being a fan of ports, passive radiators and transmission lines as we covered over the last few days. A sealed box simply means that the loudspeaker driver is trapped in a box with no air vents or holes in it at […]
Paul McGowan: We’ve probably beat this topic of being an Audiophile to death. The discussion sparked a few ideas about how we might get together in service of ourselves. There’s advantage and power in a group, certainly a self serving one. More to follow someday. But today is Thanksgiving. That time of year when we […]
Paul McGowan ….. A recent’s post on subwoofer placement certainly got some disagreement from folks. So, let me start off by saying if something you’re doing works, then that’s great! Secondly, let me suggest that while my manner of speaking and writing is one of absolutes (sorry, others are driven crazy by this as well) […]
Paul McGowan ….. I tried explaining the organization of my music library to our chief engineer. He has a very logical structured mind. There is little obvious logic and structure to my library. This was going to be a difficult task. I’ll give you a little background as to why I manage the library perhaps […]
Paul McGowan ….. After a recent post I was thinking about the term Separation as it applies to the instruments and singers on a soundstage. I spoke of how the elements in the recording were rounded and separate such that they seemed as if I could reach out and touch them. They were palpable. It […]
Paul McGowan …… If you had a chance to read yesterday’s post you’ll remember we’re in the process of setting up Music Room number Two, where we have a pair of floor standing 2-way Thiel loudspeakers. That room is considerably smaller than Music Room One, measuring 12 x 15 feet, compared to Music Room One’s […]
Paul McGowan writes …… My son Scott loves music; perhaps more than I. He’s willing to listen even if the recording is awful and is able to turn off the rejection mechanism so ingrained in my head as an Audiophile. Part of me wishes I was just as able to be that selective – because […]
Paul McGowan ….. I promised we’d get started on system tuning and figuring out how to relate what I am doing on the new system to what you can do on yours. Hopefully this new series will be a help to you in getting the most out of your high-end audio system. The first thing […]
Paul McGowan …… Thanks for all the kind words about my recent post about music and how smart I must be to have written such a piece. Sorry to disappoint but that article was actually written by our resident musicologist Larry Schenbeck, who IS really smart. Thanks Larry, the mailing service grabbed his article instead […]
Paul McGowan ….. Words, tastes, sights, sounds are specific recipes that activate neuro transmitters in our brains that bring meaning to each. I know it’s the engineer in me that brings this to your attention, but how things work fascinates me. When you taste something it is a specific formulation of the 5 primary tastes […]
Paul McGowan writes: In a recent post we learned that the size of a switching power supply is so much smaller than a conventional linear supply because the power transformer shrunk an order of several magnitudes – and it did this because we’ve managed to chop up the incoming AC into little tiny on/off bits […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. Number 7 in our list of design challenges for a DAC or a preamplifier output stage is providing a single ended or balanced output. As in everything we designers do there are multiple ways to achieve this: some simple others more complex and each with different audible results. First let’s remember […]
Paul McGowan ….. I have been listening to a lot of vinyl as of late – we’re getting ready to launch a new phono preamp – and the evaluation process if ongoing. Unfortunately I do not have the big reference system setup yet so I am relegated to sound room number 2, which isn’t as […]
Paul McGowan writes: I’m not sure how this thread morphed into a How I built this about volume controls but things have a tendency to just drift in a certain direction. But, I ramble on. In yesterday’s post, I told the story of boiling the innards of a volume control down to nothing more than a […]
Paul McGowan writes …… As a vegetarian for most of my adult life I don’t eat meat, fish or crow. Because I promised all of you I would eat crow if I was wrong about putting a preamp in the system, let me back off and simply use another metaphor I can live with: swallowing […]
Paul McGowan writes: Years ago, there were mostly passive subs, but over time this changed. Modern subwoofers are internally amplified. So it might seem intuitive to connect them as you would any power amplifier, with an interconnect to the preamp or DAC. This works, but would not be my first choice. The problem with cables and […]
Paul McGowan …… When I first started PS Audio some 40 years ago, times were tough. The company was definitely a labor of love, one we not only didn’t make any money at, but instead, invested every nickel we had (and didn’t have) just to keep the dream alive. One of my regrets was selling […]