Paul McGowan wrote a while back ….. I am heading out this morning to visit a reviewer who agreed to listen to the BHK monoblock amplifiers. It’s exciting and I like to be there when reviewers have a chance to listen; there are always questions best asked and answered in real time. And no, I […]
Paul McGowan
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Paul McGowan: Yesterday I promised you an interesting thought challenge that has to do with getting music to sound live in your room – something we mostly all agree our industry and our equipment falls quite short of being able to do. First, imagine yourself sitting in the center row of an auditorium. There on […]
Paul McGowan writes: It was an active bass correction device that made sense – because instead of correcting the output of the speakers for bass problems in the room – it fixed the room itself and left the main speakers alone. Not sure whatever happend to it but it mirrors an idea I’ve had for […]
Paul McGowan: There was a time when we could accurately say that most all digital was inferior to most all analog – the CD vs. vinyl debate. As I pointed out the fact we can master a digital recording into vinyl and have it sound like analog suggests that’s no longer the case. In fact […]
Paul McGowan writes: My suggestion that it probably doesn’t make sense to hold loudspeaker designers to a flat spec certainly generated a few comments and one poster asked me not to fuel the fires of this “movement” because there’s already enough chaos in sound reproduction as it is – let’s not add more in the […]
Paul McGowan writes: Recently I posted about the controlled demo and several of you seemed upset that I would even think about suggesting my musical choices might show off our equipment better than yours. I understand the sentiment but I only half agree. Let me give you a bit of background. Years ago when […]
Paul McGowan: One of my readers commented that “it sure is easier to just put a record on the turntable and play it” in response to trying to understand the complexity of sending music out of a computer. Well, sure it is – just as it’s even easier to put a CD into a CD […]
Paul McGowan: Pluck or strum a stringed instrument and you get sound from the vibrating strings amplified by the attached hollow box. As we have mentioned earlier the sound of that plucked string depends certainly on the type of string, its length, tension and sound of its mechanical amplifier, but more so on how that […]
Paul McGowan writes: Can we ever hope to achieve a two-channel experience with music so real as to fool ourselves into believing there is an actual musician playing in front of us? I mean sure we can close our eyes and imagine a live event is happening, but in all the years I have never […]
Paul McGowan: Our chief engineer, Bob Stadtherr, always likes to remind us that every project has two phases: the first 90% and the second 90%. It always brings a smile. But he has a point, one you can probably relate to in your own life. You get through the first 90% of your task and […]
Paul McGowan writes: I wonder how much it matters to most of us to know and understand what’s going on inside a piece of audio kit. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly enjoy sharing my bits of knowledge with you about design, how things work and why – and frankly am always appreciative of even […]
Paul McGowan: Much of the feedback on this subject centered around the name “high-end” and the general feeling the name’s a turn off because it equates to “high-priced” in people’s minds and doesn’t really describe the concept. I agree. But that just reinforces my first contention that we need a brand name. Brand names create […]
Paul McGowan writes: There’s a popular misconception amongst Audiophiles that analog is continuous and digital isn’t; ergo analog is better because nothing is missing as it must be in digital. While this is a nice idea it is not a correct one. The first thing to understand is how an analog system captures and records […]
Paul McGowan writes ….. In my mind, I am mostly right about stuff—wrong only on occasion. But then my wife, Terri, keeps better score—which she says now stands at about 50/50. Guess I was wrong about the score, too. To that point, I have always referred to the wall behind the loudspeakers as the rear […]
Paul McGowan: Most high-end audio systems I see and own are collections of equipment added/subtracted/modified over time. The systems have grown organically as we add the next best thing or eliminate the one we don’t like. Rarely do we get to sell everything and start fresh with a clean slate. Imagine for a moment what […]
Paul McGowan writes: One of the least intrusive, yet least effective type of filter for the AC line is the parallel filter. There are a number of different types but these filters generally consist of a single or group of capacitors across the hot and neutral. Placing a capacitor across the hot and neutral does […]
Paul McGowan writes: Have you ever thought about how many different people you’ve been in your lifetime? The Paul of high school is very different than the one typing this note—even the me of a decade ago isn’t the same as today and there’s every indication tomorrow will bring more changes. It’s a funny thing […]
If I am in the Music Room listening to some change engineering made or a new tweak we want to put into products, it’s my responsibility to listen and evaluate those changes as best I can and pass judgment on them. Sometimes that’s very difficult because I find myself in a situation where it sounds […]
Paul McGowan: While enjoying a morning cup of coffee I was reading Art Dudley’s engaging article on his acquisition of an old pair of Altec Lansing loudspeakers in the May issue of Stereophile. In the latter half of the article he tries to tame the Altec horn of its tendency to ring when stimulated – […]
Paul McGowan writes: We cobble together multiple components to form a stereo system. Speakers, cables, equipment, are all necessary elements to produce music in our homes. The skills needed to assemble a proper stereo are not taught in school and with the single exception of Jim Smith’s excellent work, I’ve yet to see a book explaining […]
Paul McGowan writes: In our post on Software Jitter I got several emails from folks telling me “that’s an obvious distortion path”. True enough but it sure wasn’t before we found it. Fact is we’ve been struggling with trying to figure out why small changes in the code that runs our products have an impact […]
Have you ever noticed that if you have an opinion about something it can easily be dismissed or agreed upon as soon as you know there’s a term or explanation for it? For example I used to reject as distasteful olive oils that were so spicy they burned the back of my throat until I […]
Paul McGowan: This is the first post in our series on Tubes vs. Transistors. I’ll do my best to keep this fun, informative, not uber technical and to the point so we can all have something to look forward to each day. You may have heard the term “Audion” as there is a UK manufacturer […]
Paul McGowan: Thanks to reader John McRee for suggesting the title of today’s post. Yesterday we learned we need 8 times more power to reproduce speech than we do sine waves – which may then surprise people that loudspeaker manufacturers continue to use sine waves as a basis for their efficiency measurements. It certainly surprises […]