Paul's Posts

There's a railroad crossing on my way to work that I've been driving over for years. The other morning, for the first time, I noticed a small metal sign bolted... Read more...

The cashew case

Buy a bag of mixed nuts, and what's always inside? Cashews. But, here's the thing. Cashews aren't nuts. Botanically, a nut is a hard-shelled fruit where the shell doesn't split... Read more...

Audio gambling

Writing software is a lot like gambling. You study the situation, develop a strategy you believe in, put in the work, and then push your chips across the table. Then,... Read more...

Fireworks

I am writing this note near the end of June, but I thought I'd save it for the 4th of July—a day of fireworks—because that's what it is. Once in... Read more...

Life and code

Picture the simplest program imaginable: a square that toggles black to white and back. Two states. You can test both, prove it perfect, and walk away. It can be flawless... Read more...

Complexity

I've spent more than fifty years building audio equipment, and the last stretch of months pouring myself into Maestro, the music software I've been quietly obsessed with. People sometimes ask... Read more...

Ella

Of course, the greatest and most revered Ella in the world is Ella Fitzgerald...amazing even to this day. Which is one of the reasons I chose Ella for the name... Read more...

Expensive mistakes

The most expensive way to build an audio system is to ignore synergy. I've watched people spend serious money on components that don't work well together — an amplifier that... Read more...

Recording arsenals

Reference discs and playlists should be an important part of your arsenal. Without reference materials you'll never be able to set a standard for evaluating everything from system tweaks to... Read more...

Listening and learning

The albums we know best teach us the most about our systems. I have records I've listened to hundreds of times. Not because I couldn't find anything new — I... Read more...

Groovy

A vinyl record is a physical imprint of sound. Not an approximation. Not a code like digital. The actual shape of the sound wave — compressed into a groove cut... Read more...

Magical moments

Magic happens when you least expect it. Not a gradual appreciation. Not a slow dawning. One moment, in someone's living room or a hi-fi shop or a friend's basement, when... Read more...

Tired?

Some systems make you want to stay. Others make you reach for the volume control. Listening fatigue. The most common cause is distortion, but not the kind we easily measure.... Read more...

The sounds of silence

The quiet parts of the music are as important as their counterpart. We spend a lot of our attention chasing the loud moments — the crescendo, the impact, the sweep... Read more...

Future proof?

Imagine you're an archaeologist a hundred years from now, holding a hard drive you've just excavated from the ruins of a data center. You have no context. No manual. No... Read more...

Bookshelves

The term "bookshelf speaker" has been misleading people for about seventy years, and the name shows no sign of going away. In 1954, Edgar Villchur and Henry Kloss introduced the... Read more...

Stereo religion

The word evangelist is older than audio, older than electricity, older than anything we'd recognize as technology. It comes from the Greek — euangelion — meaning good news. An evangelist... Read more...

Movies or music?

An A/V receiver and a high-end integrated amplifier look similar from the outside. They are miles apart from each other. A receiver tries to do everything. It decodes multichannel surround... Read more...

Motors

The voice coil is a tiny copper or aluminum cylinder buried inside your speaker, and almost every aspect of how a driver sounds traces back to choices made about it.... Read more...

Tired?

A great system invites you to listen all night. A not-so-great one fatigues and wears you out. You struggle to stay engaged. Listening fatigue has identifiable causes, and once you... Read more...

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