Paul's Posts

The best systems make the hardest work sound easy. There’s a particular quality I listen for when evaluating a system: ease. Not softness, not warmth, not politeness—ease. When an amplifier... Read more...

Streaming vs. engagement

Convenience has never been the same thing as engagement. Streaming has given us access to nearly every piece of recorded music ever made. It’s astonishing. With a few taps, you... Read more...

HiFi Family connections

High-end audio may be about sound, but it thrives on human connection. Every year, as Axpona approaches, I feel a familiar sense of anticipation. This year it takes place April... Read more...

The luxury of listening

To sit quietly and do nothing but listen to music has increasingly become a lost art. I sometimes wonder how many people still do it. Not as background. Not while... Read more...

The destination myth

It sounds trite to say the journey matters more than the destination, yet it keeps proving itself true. I’ve spent much of my life chasing mountaintops. The idea is always... Read more...

Uncovering the obvious

The strange thing about improvement is that it often reveals what was there all along. When a system reaches a certain level, changes stop sounding like changes. Instead, they feel... Read more...

When logic gets in the way

Some of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from being wrong. And I am right about that. :) As a designer, I’ve always trusted logic. If something adds circuitry... Read more...

Spirals

Progress in audio design rarely moves in a straight line. Early in my career, I believed that if we just took enough careful steps forward—measure, listen, refine—we’d eventually arrive at... Read more...

Is bigger better?

There was a time when bigger meant better in audio. I still remember the console stereo my dad bought in the ‘50s. Walnut veneer, glowing dials of the Stromberg Carlson... Read more...

Textures

Texture in sound is the difference between hearing music and feeling it. I remember listening to a string quartet through an early prototype of the PMG DAC. What struck me... Read more...

What if?

New technologies always seem to scare us. I remember when computers first came into the workplace. There was fear in the air—real fear. People warned that we'd all be out... Read more...

The color of sound

We hear music in color, even though it comes to us in waves, not hues. From the early days of describing sound, musicians and engineers have used color as metaphor:... Read more...

There is no absolute sound

With apologies to our friends at the magazine.... The idea of a perfect sound is comforting—but it’s fiction. I’ve spent the last fifty years chasing the goal of accurate reproduction.... Read more...

We won't get fooled again

One of the most common traps we audiophiles fall into is confusing clarity with brightness. When you first swap in a new cable, DAC, or pair of speakers and hear... Read more...

Closing the loop

Most companies just make gear. We also make music. One of the things I’m proudest of at PS Audio is that we’ve closed the loop. Most audio companies design products... Read more...

Links in the chain

The most important part of high-end audio isn’t gear. It isn't music. It’s people. Every one of us who calls ourselves an audiophile got here somehow. A spark was lit—maybe... Read more...

A final nerding out

Here's our last in this nerding out blathering about timing. If timing doesn’t matter across the internet or your home network, why does it make such a big difference when... Read more...

Timing heresy

As admitted audiophiles, we’re trained to obsess over timing. We spend real money on reclockers, atomic clocks, femto clocks—clocks so precise they’d make NASA jealous. Some of these devices are... Read more...

Timing is everything

...until it doesn't matter. I’ve been babbling a bit about streaming music and how it all works, and here’s something surprising that most folks don’t realize: when music is streamed,... Read more...

Nerding out

In yesterday's post I mentioned that in my experience, using the Qobuz app into the PMG streamer or AirLens sounds a little better than when run through Roon. That bristled... Read more...

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