Paul's Posts

If I decide to enjoy a beer it is always served from an ice cold glass and never consumed directly out of the bottle. In fact, if there is no glass... Read more...

Guideposts

How many times have I been disappointed by following someone else's unqualified advice? "My favorite restaurant is...." "Best movie I have ever seen...." "Most revealing speakers I have ever heard..."... Read more...

How big?

How big an image is too big? If the soundstage exceeds to limits of your speakers, does that qualify as bigger than life? Or, does it depend on the music?... Read more...

An amp's sound

We talk a great deal about the sound of an amplifier: warm, big, thin, weak, transparent, musical. Truth is, what we're hoping for is no sound at all. Not the... Read more...

Magical moments

Summers are a delight in Colorado. They are warm and dry with a fluff of white clouds floating against the deep blue sky. Got home from PS Audio at about... Read more...

Controlling the tone

Remember back when we had controls for tonal balance? Bass, treble and sometimes even midrange. I recall several integrateds from high-end manufacturers that sported a full 5-band graphic equalizer. This... Read more...

The great reveal

One of the conundrums of high end audio is its revealing nature. The better the system the more obvious both the flaws and wonders of a recording. We sometimes refer... Read more...

How far have we come?

I was upstairs in the sales office yesterday rummaging around through our PS museum when I happened up one of our best selling preamplifiers of all time, the PSIV, circa... Read more...

Aliens

David, one of our HiFi Family members, had a question about digital cables. It was one I hear all the time. Given that my unit is said to be galvanically... Read more...

Worms

There are a couple of things we do not want to open: Pandora's Box and cans of worms. Why? Because unexpected and (maybe) unwanted artifacts are said to come crawling... Read more...

Listening to sine waves

Imagine sitting in your favorite listening chair, a glass of wine in hand, as you fire up your high-end audio system. You press play and a single tone emerges from the... Read more...

Mix and match

There's a certain beauty into just outfitting your entire system with the manufacturer's offerings. It's what I do and I love it. Yet, there's also the powerful alternative of mixing and matching.... Read more...

Fantasy system

I wonder what each of us would dream about if we could wave that proverbial magic wand around and have any system we'd want. Would it be an all encompassing... Read more...

Bag of tricks

The term "bag of tricks" finds its origins in an ancient fable by Aesop, "The Fox and the Cat". In this tale, a boastful fox claims to possess a whole bag... Read more...

The missing element

With all the emphasis on equipment and music it's sometimes easy to ignore one of the most critical aspects of our high-end audio systems. The chair. One of the first... Read more...

Buried treasure

When something jumps out at us—hearing a difference from another room or a slap in the face improvement—we tend to place far more importance on it then if we have... Read more...

First impressions

Over my many years I have noticed a few differentiating traits in people. One of them is our trust level in first impressions. When we hear something for the first... Read more...

The collector

Most of us have built our systems over a period of time. We've collected, refined, ousted, included, and settled on this amplifier, that loudspeaker, those cables. Our systems are rarely... Read more...

Pliable standards

Years ago I visited a famous audio reviewer's home. I was there to make sure our new piece of kit he was about to review was properly setup. I was... Read more...

From nothing to everything

Some believe high-end audio is all marketing hype, arguing that any well measuring off-the-shelf commercial system can easily compete with an expensive high-end setup. This perspective, while common, is something... Read more...

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