Paul McGowan: If you’re serious about building a high-performance audio system you have to pay attention to the AC power. It’s a constant theme with me because power is the foundation of our systems. There aren’t many great structures standing on weak foundations. Power Plants solve many problems but they need a head start. One […]
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There are a seemingly endless variety of cone materials used in loudspeakers. What effects do they have to the sound and how do you choose one from another when designing a speaker? Watch Now
If you’re on a budget what’s the right place to put your money? Do you spend the most on sources and electronics or loudspeakers? Electronic manufacturer Paul offers his opinion to you. Watch Now
Speaker stands are great for getting the height of small 2-way and bookshelf speakers just right but they can have the disadvantage of being resonant. What’s the best way to damp them? Watch Now
In our search for sonic truth, there comes a point where the systems get so good their “truth” is more about our personal preference. In fact, personal preferences often trump truth. We know we’ve gotten closer to the truth when it matches what we believe to be the musical truth. Of course, no one knows what musical truth is. […]
I remember the first time I became aware of what we call Listener Fatigue. It was many years ago when there was only turntables, vinyl and most people listened to nothing but tube electronics; solid state was just coming onto the hi fi scene and we are part of that pioneering effort. I know I’ve […]
Most tube power amps have an advantage over most solid state amps: high voltage. If we look at a typical tube vs. solid state design, that tube design might have up to ten times more voltage than the solid state design – at least in a preamplifier. The tubes need the high voltage to operate […]
This’ll be the first of a few posts where we delve into networking and computer audio systems. In prior posts we looked at what I would refer to as a closed system: a single computer with a DAC attached to it. This works fine but has a number of drawbacks, many of which are not […]
Paul McGowan writes: The summer of 1977 found my partner Stan and I looking to increase our sales of phono stages and we thought we would try and entice a few dealers to carry the product. Up until this day we were 100% direct-to-customer, something you see more of today in high-end audio, but back […]
Paul McGowan writes … There sure is a lot of confusion over sample rates. We hear about CD-quality sample rates at 44.1kHz (and its multiples), or another common sample rate, 48kHz (and its multiples), and then there are multiple higher sample rates (176kHz, 192kHz as examples) and of course DSD. Lots of numbers. All very […]
Paul McGowan: One of the more satisfying affirmations happens when two or more unrelated people make the same sonic observation. We send out an update and emailed observations roll in. “What happened to the bottom end?” Or, “The top end just opened up.” For better or for worse, it is fascinating that so many unrelated […]
How does one measure the differences between amplifiers when they clearly sound different? The first and simplest measurements are frequency response and noise levels: frequency response shows us that everything we put in makes it through to the output and noise levels are an obvious thing to measure so we don’t have hiss. Fancier measurements […]
It seems like a simple potentiometer in a box would be the cleanest and best sounding preamplifier on the planet. So why aren’t they more popular and what’s PS Audio doing about them? Watch Now
Paul McGowan writes: When I sit in the sound room for critical listening of course I always grab the “hot seat” because certainly in my system, that’s the place where the best imaging and tonal balance take place – and not just by a little bit – it’s seriously better than any other seat in […]
What is the significance of the folding transmission line in a loudspeaker? My guess is that not many of you have heard of a folding transmission line in a loudspeaker, much less ever heard one working. The late Bud Fried, from Fried Audio (pronounced “freed” as opposed to what one might do with eggs), was […]
Paul McGowan … TAS reviewer Michael Fremer has an extraordinary music system—the best vinyl setup I’ve ever heard. And it makes sense that he does. Mike’s spent a lifetime learning about vinyl audio reproduction and hand selected the best equipment in the world. His digital setup played through that same setup doesn’t quite match my […]
https://www.psaudio.com/askpaul/current-vs-power-in-amps/
Paul McGowan … All stereo systems produce a sonic image—some better than others. But, regardless of the image quality, there’s one thing we can say they have in common: a size to that image. If you turn the level of the stereo down to a whisper there’s a tiny image trapped between the speakers. Crank […]
Paul McGowan … We love things to make sense and fit into neat little boxes so we can manage our view of the world. When they don’t we can take a number of different paths: ignore, anguish, change the story, disbelief, start researching. We understand that at the heart of 2-channel high-end audio is the […]
When we look at the specs for a piece of audio equipment we want to make sure it doesn’t emphasize or reduce one frequency area over another. We routinely see flatness specs that are within 1/10th of a dB from below where we can hear to way above where we hear. These specs make us […]
Paul McGowan … Sorry about the headline, just couldn’t resist. We are going to start delving into the working of Class D amps, also incorrectly known as “digital amps” and correctly labeled PWM amps – short for Pulse Width Modulation. As is our custom we’ll start with an overview and then get into details. It’s […]
Paul McGowan …. My friend, Sandy, is having good success adding a layer of ambience with a rear-positioned second set of speakers fed from an old Audio Research SDP1. You can read the late J. Gordon Holt’s evaluation of it here. Essentially, the device extracts the difference between the left and right channels, adds a bit […]
When we speak of global feedback we’re referring to the practice of wrapping the output signal of a device back to its input for comparison and correction. Because the input “knows” what’s right, a simple comparison circuit between the two serves to rectify any differences. Of course, nothing in engineering is a free lunch. You […]
When we think about distortion products we are generally referring to the harmonic kind. Harmonics are naturally occurring byproducts of sound: a plucked string will generate the intended frequency (called the first harmonic) and then higher versions of that note, each slightly less loud than its predecessor. These higher frequencies are all integers (whole numbers) […]