Paul McGowan: Most high-end audio systems are very personal because they are hand assembled by the owner. Rarely are any two alike and that’s kind of what makes this sport fun. But if dealers sold pre-assembled “cookie cutter” systems that the owner did not personalize, would they still be high-end? I believe so. I believe […]
Paul McGowan
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Paul McGowan writes: I remember learning to ride a bicycle. My father, Don, patiently held the bike upright—running alongside me—as I tried to get enough speed and balance to avoid crashing. At one point I felt confident enough to yell “let go!” only to look behind me and realize he had done so several hundred […]
Paul McGowan: The new power amp I’ve written about is finished and it’s everything I ever hoped for in an amp. Unfortunately there’s only one in the world at the moment and more won’t appear until this summer. The process of going from the one to the many is tedious, laborious and so completely necessary […]
Paul McGowan writes: Even simpler than PCM. But here’s a case where the concept may be simple but the execution is not. However, in order to understand how it works, we don’t really need to wade into the details. Basically we have a fixed clock running at 2.6MHz (single DSD, analogous to 176.4kHz in […]
Paul McGowan writes: When a trumpet or trombone plays loudly – or a bass drum or gong is hit hard – the sound that is produced by the instrument is dynamically linear with the softer sounds that instrument can make. The same cannot generally be said about a loudspeaker that is reproducing those sounds. Imagine […]
Paul McGowan writes: It’s no surprise that vinyl and digital are different. Different mastering techniques, playback equipment, recording chain (often), bandwidth, dynamics. So it should be no surprise that a system optimized for one, doesn’t sound as good playing back the other. Music Room One, for example, has been optimized for digital audio reproduction. Michael […]
Paul McGowan writes: I mentioned that the retailer is the perfect sorting house – choosing and selling only those products that perfectly reflect the dealer’s brand promise and makes it easy for customers, especially new customers, to make easy choices getting involved with high-end audio. Several of you asked “what about the two magazines, TAS […]
Paul McGowan writes: If you had a chance to read my recent 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 […]
While the high-end is still enjoying a great deal of demand and support, high-end dealers are not. The state of high-end audio retailing isn’t good; we lose a few each year and they are not being replaced. Some manufacturers are abandoning the high-end retail channel altogether: B and W is a good example. While not […]
Paul McGowan: 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 sound […]
Paul McGowan writes: Power supplies play a big role in how a product sounds: something we’ve been advocates of for years with our bigger power transformers, exotic regulators and Power Plant AC regenerators that make everything sound better. Most designers now agree that the power supply in a design is at least as important as […]
Paul McGowan writes: For the past few days, I’ve been in Japan visiting dealers, riding the Bullet Train (200 mph), and enjoying this wonderful culture and its incredible people. Yesterday I was in the country’s second largest city, Osaka. The day before, the far north. What a treat. I will definitely put together a short […]
Paul McGowan writes: Modern analog designs leverage common circuit ideas. Few are original. Complimentary outputs, vbe multipliers, diff pairs, current sources, current mirrors, etc., were all original designs that became commonplace. One of the most talented, creative, and radical designers of all time is Bob Widlar. Widlar invented the basic building blocks of linear ICs. […]
Paul McGowan writes: In my experience getting the very low frequencies to integrate and propagate through the room is the biggest challenge we have placing a subwoofer in the room. That’s why in yesterday’s post I suggested we start low: both in frequency and level. If you’re using one of the low frequency rich discs […]
Maybe Frito Bandito? I promised to get into specifics about the idea I put forth of manufacturers adopting the Wal Mart approach of not owning inventory as way to get local “audio experts” to become high-end retailers. Reader Steve Barry (himself once a high-end retailer) pointed out a flaw in that model and suggested something […]
Paul McGowan writes: I was set to move onward in our explanation of the output analog stage of a DAC or preamp but one of my readers asked me to explain output impedance which I mentioned a few days ago. This is a subject that folks should understand at least at some level because so […]
Paul McGowan: Sidewalls are easy to ignore. In fact, I’ll bet you haven’t a clear memory of what they even look like or their distance from the center seat. Most of us know our front and rear walls. We stare at or pass through them each time we enter or leave the room. Yet, in […]
Paul McGowan writes: Buying decisions are tough enough even if money’s no object, but when you’re on a limited budget—as many of us are—how do you make the tough choices of where to put your hard earned funds? The side of our personalities that want immediate gratification looks for the biggest bang for the buck. […]
Paul McGowan writes: We have two channel systems with dedicated left and right speakers, yet often we’re told it’s just fine to use a single subwoofer in mono. I’d like to suggest this attitude is wrong. The single-sub advocate’s logic goes something like this. “Low frequencies are essentially non-directional so it shouldn’t matter if the […]
Paul McGowan writes: A good friend of many years is in town for a few days and we’ve been discussing high-end audio, products, the marketplace, etc. He’s been spending time in our facilities and sees the extraordinary effort that goes into designing some of our products: the months of hard work it takes to get […]
Paul McGowan: There are two sides to many things: stories, paper, listening rooms. On one side are speakers and on the other, you. Where you sit in relation to the system: nearness to walls and speakers, height relative to the tweeters, in or out of bass nulls, can often make more difference than the components themselves. […]
Paul McGowan writes: Alan Sircom suggests that the problem with getting newcomers into the high-end is they already find their means of reproducing music “good enough” – so why spend more time and money getting something better? There’s some truth to what he writes. I would put forth the argument, however, that it is in […]
Paul McGowan writes Recently I mentioned I added a single sub to the setup in Music Room 2 and got great results. Several of you asked me why I didn’t add two, which is always my stand on subs, and where I got the sub. I wanted to also touch on how I connected the […]
Paul McGowan writes: A friend came by and visited our sound room and was duly impressed with what he heard. He noticed that I use lifts to get the loudspeaker cables off of the floor. Much to my surprise, he went home and did the same thing to his system and emailed me that while […]