Paul's Posts

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...

Simple experiment

Have you ever tried a simple experiment with streaming? Use a streaming service like Qobuz and listen to your favorite reference track. Now, if you're a Roon or Audirvana user,... Read more...

Surprise!

A great system doesn’t stop surprising you. The first time you hear a high-end system dialed in, it can be either overwhelming or hopefully jaw dropping. Detail, imaging, dynamics—it’s a... Read more...

Bad myths

Digital sound isn’t lifeless. Bad digital is. There’s a long-standing myth in audio that digital equals cold, sterile, and flat. That it strips the life out of music and leaves... Read more...

The elephant in the...

Every room adds its voice to the system. Even perfect ones. No matter how transparent your gear is, or how carefully you set it up, you're not listening to just... Read more...

Harder than it looks

Getting great sound takes time. And skill. And work. You can connect a system and start listening in an afternoon. But that first impression is rarely the final result. High-end... Read more...

Links in the chain

No component lives in isolation—the whole system matters. This is one of the hardest lessons to learn in high-end audio. When something doesn’t sound right, it’s tempting to blame the... Read more...

The last stop

We've been waxing on about streaming for the past few days covering the idea the controller, the iPad or phone you use to discover all about artists and select the... Read more...

The unsung hero

In a streaming audio setup your fancy, schmancy remote is the interface you control and interact with to choose your music. Once your controller picks the music, it’s the renderer... Read more...

Roon? A fancy remote

Most of us are streaming these days, so I thought we’d spend the next few days exploring how it really works. For something so common, streaming remains surprisingly misunderstood—even among... Read more...

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