The best engineering lesson comes wrapped in failure.
I used to cringe when someone proved me wrong. Now I get excited. Being wrong, especially in audio, means I’m about to learn something new. Like when I was convinced that removing the preamp would lead to purer sound—just wire the DAC straight to the amp, right? But no matter how good the source or volume control, the sound was thinner, less dimensional. Adding back a high-performance preamp brought back the magic.
That discovery didn’t happen in theory. It happened in our listening room, after months of experimenting. And it changed how I design systems.
Same thing happened when I saw what Chris Brunhaver did with passive radiators. I was a sealed-box purist. But he showed me—physically and sonically—how radiators, done right, not only match but exceed sealed performance without the ported box problems. Now I hear it clearly in our FR30s.
It's a privelege to be wrong and learn from it.
