About Paul McGowan
Paul McGowan is the co-founder of PS Audio (The 'P' ) and has been designing, building and enjoying high end audio since 1974. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his four sons: Lon, Sean, Scott and Rob. His hobbies include hiking, skiing, cooking, artisan bread baking. His current big project, other than playing with stereos, is writing a book series called the Carbon Chronicles. Book One, the Lost Chronicle, is a work in progress. You can view his efforts at http://www.paulmcgowan.com
What some say are subtle differences are huge differences to the discerning ear. I think that is the difference. People hear the difference but to some it’s not worth the extra money. Kind of like wine. People know there’s a difference between a 15.00 and 100.00 bottle of wine but are completely happy with their 15.00 wine.
There are also those giant killers out there that are cheap and over-perform for the money. Spending more doesn’t necessarily mean it’s going to sound better.
Some of the vintage stuff out there sounds better then the new stuff. It’s why some of the vintage stuff demand huge price tags. Change or modern doesn’t always mean better.
Designers have to be careful when tinkering with something and that better sound is the result. Sometimes it’s done to cost cut. They create a great sounding design then after it gets a great reputation they use inferior parts to cost cut and making it smaller and lighter to save on shipping. It’s why people want to know the year of manufacture on some vintage stuff.
The good manufacturers will work on improving the sound of a proven design and add a letter or number to slightly change the name of the model instead of cost cutting and cheapening it then boasting it’s an improvement. Specifications can change without notice came in many owners manuals. Hopefully any changes made are for the good of the sound. If it’s not broke don’t fix it.
Paul:
In very simple terms I think that most people don’t have a reference to compare. To coin a phrase “ you don’t know – what you don’t know “. Like your UPS drivers, they didn’t know what higher quality sound, sounded like. Now that they do, they might develop some interest in pursuing equipment better than the mass marketed price point electronics.
Long ago when I conducted research in acoustics, we would solicit students from the university campus to become subjects in our
experiments. We did consistently notice that students from the music department always provided data that differed significantly from those students from other academic persuasions.
Does this mean musicians hear differently due to a biologic difference or is it due to training????
And the merry-go-round keeps spinning!
larry