Paul's Posts

Mistakes are underrated teachers. I’ve learned more about speaker placement from getting it wrong than I ever have from getting it right. You toe a pair of speakers in just... Read more...

Lights out

Sometimes the best listening happens in the dark. There’s something that changes when you turn the lights off. The room disappears. Your eyes stop scanning. You’re no longer distracted by... Read more...

Taming the room

The room is the most important component you never plug in. It’s funny—we’ll obsess over cables, power supplies, even fuse direction. But the room? That big, reflective, resonant space we... Read more...

The beam

Ever feel like you're inside a sonic flashlight? That’s beaming—a focused, narrow dispersion of sound that locks you in like a tractor beam. Large panel speakers, ribbons, electrostatics—they’re often guilty.... Read more...

Sweet spot

I doubt there's an audiophile worth his salt that hasn't offered the chair of honor to a friend. The sweet spot. The golden chair. Here's the thing. That sweet spot's... Read more...

Resolving vs. revealing

It might seem like semantics, but I think it’s something more. A resolving system has the technical chops to pull out every last detail. It’s about capability. How much information... Read more...

The color of sound

Sound has color. We describe systems as warm, cool, rich, lean. We talk about golden midranges or silvery highs. These are colors, not numbers. And while they’re subjective, they’re real.... Read more...

Granularity

Granularity isn’t a common audio term—but maybe it should be. It’s that ultra-fine resolution in a great system, the kind that lets you hear into the texture of the music.... Read more...

Sonic personality

The chassis is more than a box. It’s part of the story. You've seen it. You've experienced it. You know it. There’s something about the way a piece of gear feels... Read more...

The volume trap

We like it loud—but too much of a good thing is still too much. There’s this idea that cranking up the volume reveals more. And it does—until it doesn’t. Push... Read more...

The skeptic

We audiophiles can be a skeptical bunch. The second someone claims a power cable can tighten the bass or open up the top end, the pitchforks come out. “Snake oil!”... Read more...

Rising and slewing

Transients are the split-second bursts of energy that give music its life. Without them, sound is dull, slow, and lifeless. Take a cymbal crash. The moment the drumstick strikes the... Read more...

Getting loud

Ever notice how some systems can be cranked up without ever sounding aggressive? That’s no accident. In fact, it is rare. A great system doesn’t just get louder—it effortlessly scales.... Read more...

Hard to believe

This morning marks the opening of the Chicago audio show known as Axpona. Now, that's probably not news to many of you, but what I am about to unfold just... Read more...

Planars and ribbons

In my YouTube videos, I’ve been guilty of using "planar" and "ribbon" interchangeably at times. Oops. They are, in fact, very different creatures. A planar magnetic driver, like the kind... Read more...

Colors

Sound has color, but not in the way a painter might think. When we talk about the "color" of sound, we’re really talking about its harmonic character. Some sounds are... Read more...

First Watt

The first watt is the most important watt. Most of our listening happens at just a few watts of power, yet we obsess over high-powered amplifiers, thinking more watts mean... Read more...

You might have missed it

Something extraordinary just happened. Back in the 1950s, when computers filled entire rooms and had less brainpower than a modern toaster, Alan Turing asked a provocative question: Can machines think?... Read more...

Music without borders

Music doesn’t recognize borders. Neither should we. As audiophiles, we’re part of a global community bound not by geography but by a shared passion—to get closer to the music, to... Read more...

Where's your focus?

Most of us have both vinyl and digital in our systems. I certainly do. But where do we focus? Where do we put our energy, our investment, our tuning efforts?... Read more...

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