PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan As a lifelong photographer, I have, over many decades, developed a practiced eye. What’s that mean? Simply that my eye/brain connections are wired to see through the camera’s viewfinder in such a way that good composition feels natural. (If you’re interested, you can see my photo gallery here). In the same way, we, as […]
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Paul McGowan: Most of us think of the hot seat, sometimes better known as the Sweet Spot, as the center chair in front of our loudspeaker pair. And that would be correct. But as we begin this new year it’s instructive to open our thoughts to some new ideas. Why do we think it’s so […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I think that by this time in our lives we no longer believe in Santa Clause, the Easter bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Like the myths of our youth, old tropes that we might have picked up when we first started our journey down the path of high-end audio can […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan And for that matter, how can same-measuring-anything sound different? The answer lies in a couple of areas. First, we do not measure all parameters that impact sound quality. In fact, as you will see below, we miss some of the most important opportunities for quantifying performance. Second, even if we […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Speaker designer Chris Brunhaver shared with me a funny YouTube video. Check out the Knob Feel channel. Probably worth one or two quick views for a good laugh. However, it does bring to mind the importance of feel. I doubt many of us are immune to the touchy-feely aspects of high-end audio. […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Back in the 90s, when we first started investigating the importance of AC power, we were shocked to find major sonic changes when running our equipment’s AC power through a conditioner. Relative to plugging straight into the wall AC socket, running the AC through a passive line conditioner we immediately […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan Purity is defined as freedom from adulteration or contamination. In other words, pure is free from anything other than itself. Pure water, pure air, pure sound. So what happens when we use impure methods such as EQ to achieve sonic purity? Should we be branded as heretics? I recently ran into this […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I am guessing a number of people believe that to qualify as high-end audio gear means it must be expensive. I want to argue the opposite. The true meaning of high-end audio has nothing to do with price and everything to do with performance. That the highest performance gear is […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan In yesterday’s post, I wrote about the importance of lower impedance in the AC line voltage. I mentioned that lowering the impedance is far more important than cleaning up the AC line noise (a subject for yet another post as this goes against nearly all the conventional wisdom). I got a […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan After all these decades of building phono stages, I am still confused. Why didn’t turntable manufacturers build phono stages into their turntables in the same way CD player manufacturers built DACs into their transports? I suppose one of the answers might be that most turntable manufacturers made neither arms nor […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO While emailing back and forth with several new members of PS Audio’s HiFi Family it became apparent they weren’t aware of our podcast, Ohm’s Law. In fact, turns out they had yet to everlisten to a podcast of any kind. This is foreign to me. I listen to podcasts daily and find […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO Over on the PS Audio forums, there’s a thread about cable lifters. You can read it by clicking this link. Elevating the speaker cables off the floor works to improve the sound. Should you run out and grab a set of cable lifters today? Much depends on the state of your […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO If we believe analog is superior to digital or vice versa, we tend to gravitate toward other groups that believe the same thing. It seems true in politics, stereos, cars, and perhaps even stamp collecting. We’re looking for affirmational support that we made the right choice. Newbies to our hobby […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO In yesterday’s post, I gave a bit of background on our path at PS Audio of increasing power transformer sizing. Quite by accident, we had found that oversizing the power transformers in our products delivered audibly superior performance. It was the increased wire gauge with its subsequent lowering of impedance that […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO It doesn’t take long to figure out the importance of AC power, and perhaps no device can better demonstrate the advantages of perfect AC than a Power Plant. I wonder how many of the thousands of Power Plant owners across the globe really understand what’s important in power—why their AC […]
Paul McGowan / PS AUDIO When we need to switch inputs on an analog preamplifier we use a switch. The kind of switch we use affects sound quality. For years we had only mechanical switches from which to choose. Standard switch contacts in those days were nickel or tin-plated while the more expensive and better-sounding […]
PS AUDIO / Paul McGowan I remember thinking to myself; this is nothing short of magic. Kind of like the RIAA. Boost the heck out of the high frequencies and then run them through a low pass filter to make everything right again. In the process, hiss is lowered. Magic. What’s worth noting about this […]
It is comforting to believe that we use the best simply because it is the best. Tell that to Mark Levinson (the man) when he tried to force a change in the industry to the Lemo connector. Or remind anyone who uses on their test bench the superior BNC connector why that same connector does not grace the […]
For those of you scratching your head, a shorting plug is an RCA connector with its signal and ground wires shorted together. Here’s a picture of some fancy gold-plated versions. The idea is to stuff these shorting plugs into the unused inputs on a preamplifier. The goal is to make sure no noise gets into […]
Paul McGowan … If you’ve done your system setup homework your chair sits at a comfortable distance from the loudspeakers. With the precision of a ruler, you’ve tweaked and adjusted the speaker’s position for best imaging. Though we call it the sweet spot, it’s certainly not the perfect spot. Within the boundaries of most rooms, the perfect […]
We hear the term “resolution” referred to a lot in high-end audio but what exactly does it mean? How can it be achieved? And is it even desirable? Watch Now Paul McGowan
PS AUDIO: If we believe analog is superior to digital or vice versa, we tend to gravitate toward other groups that believe the same thing. It seems true in politics, stereos, cars, and perhaps even stamp collecting. We’re looking for affirmational support that we made the right choice. Newbies to our hobby don’t suffer the […]
PAUL McGOWAN / PS AUDIO As we move forward building the new Octave Recording studio we’re learning a great deal from both Gus Skinas and J.I. Agnew. Most of you know Gus, the mastering engineer of some note (you name the artist and it’s likely Gus has mastered something of theirs), and Copper Magazine readers […]
