Two-channel stereo is the purest window into a musical performance, and after fifty years I am more convinced of that than ever.
I fell in love with two-channel audio when Stan and I first visited the home of Norm Little, with his pair of Jantzen electrostatic tweeters, Cerwin Vega subwoofers, and all Audio Research electronics. That first moment of hearing instruments spread across an imaginary stage between two speakers changed me forever. It was not just sound. It was architecture made of air. I knew right then that I would spend my life chasing that experience and trying to make it better for other people.
In the decades since, I have spent my career designing equipment to serve that illusion. From the first PS Audio preamplifier that Stan and I built on a kitchen table to the PMG Signature line we launched last year, the goal has never wavered. Two channels. Two speakers. One listener transported to the recording venue. Every engineering decision we make starts with that premise. How does this circuit, this topology, this power supply serve the illusion of musicians performing in your room?
Along the way I have watched the industry chase surround sound, Atmos, spatial audio, and every other multichannel format that promised to improve on what two speakers could do. Some of those formats are clever and genuinely fun for movies. But for serious music listening, nothing has topped a properly set up pair of loudspeakers in a well-treated room (and no, I have yet to experience BACCH which might hold great promise). Two channels carry all the spatial information your ears and brain need to reconstruct a three-dimensional event. Adding more channels often just adds confusion.
That same obsession with getting music right led me to build Maestro, a music management application I have been developing at maestromusic.app. I wanted a program that got out of the way sonically and let the music flow untouched from the streaming service to the DAC. It is currently in beta on Mac and Windows, and frankly it is not for the faint of heart. There are bugs. Things break. But the sound quality blows away everything else I have tried because Maestro never touches the audio stream. It authenticates your session, points your renderer at the music, and steps aside. iPad and Android versions are a few months out. For now it is a passion project for the brave.
Fifty years in and my enthusiasm has not dimmed one bit. If anything it has deepened. The tools are better, the recordings are better, and the understanding of what makes two channels magical keeps growing. I still sit down every evening, press play, close my eyes, and let two speakers take me somewhere else. That never gets old.
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