Paul's Posts

Great bass isn’t about boom—it’s about foundation. Too many systems try to impress with midbass punch while ignoring what lies below. But the real magic happens in the lower octaves,... Read more...

Triangles

Speaker placement is geometry, not guesswork. If you want your speakers to disappear and the music to appear in three dimensions, start by forming an equilateral triangle between the listening... Read more...

We gotta fix it!

The power coming out of your wall is not the power your HiFi system wants. Most people assume that once electricity reaches their house, it's good to go. But the... Read more...

The magic of vinyl

Vinyl records aren’t perfect, but their imperfections are part of the magic. One of the reasons is crosstalk. A phono cartridge, by design, allows a bit of left-channel signal to... Read more...

Thanks

Over the past few weeks we’ve taken quite a journey together. We began with the language of sound, exploring how we as audiophiles describe what we hear—tonality, air, ambience, dynamics,... Read more...

The loudspeaker truth

No component in the audio chain has a greater influence on what we hear than the loudspeaker. Electronics may shape, refine, and control the signal, but the loudspeaker is where... Read more...

Why less isn't always more

We often repeat the mantra that less in the signal path is more. On the surface, it makes perfect sense. Every component, every connection, every circuit element has the potential... Read more...

Synergy

As audiophiles, we sometimes get caught up in evaluating components in isolation. A new DAC, a different amplifier, a better pair of cables—we judge each piece on its own merits.... Read more...

The fragility of imaging

For many of us, imaging is the quality that keeps us glued to the listening chair. It’s the ability of a system to place voices and instruments in a precise,... Read more...

Crosstalk

As audiophiles, we spend much of our time listening for space—how wide, how deep, and how convincing a stereo image can be. One of the factors that directly affects that... Read more...

It's absolute!

As audiophiles, we go to extraordinary lengths to preserve the integrity of the musical signal, and one of the more subtle but fascinating areas of debate is absolute phase. On... Read more...

Balanced vs. single ended

Noise is the enemy of fidelity, and how we move signals from one component to another has a major effect on how much noise we let in. Most audio gear... Read more...

Capacitors

Every component in an audio circuit leaves its mark, and few have been debated as much as capacitors. For decades, they were a necessary part of signal paths, blocking DC... Read more...

Clipping

In the early days of audio, clipping used to be one of the most damaging problems in audio, and it’s also one of the easiest to avoid if we understand... Read more...

The damping factor myth

Numbers can look impressive, but they don’t always mean what we think they do. Audiophiles are often drawn to specifications because they seem like objective markers of quality. The trouble... Read more...

More about power supplies

A day or two ago, we were discussing power supplies, and I mentioned switched-mode devices. The high-end community has traditionally eschewed these, but over time, like digital audio, they have... Read more...

Magnets vs. wires

One of the oldest debates in audio design is whether to couple signals magnetically, through transformers or inductors, or to pass them directly through wiring and capacitors. Both approaches have... Read more...

Different silicon

At the heart of most amplifiers are transistors, and two of the most common types are field-effect transistors (FETs) and bipolar junction transistors (BJTs). On a schematic they may look... Read more...

Why Power Supplies Matter

Every component in an audio system is at the mercy of its power supply. The circuits may handle the signal, but the signal itself rides on the back of the... Read more...

The Truth About Signal-to-Noise Ratio

Signal-to-noise ratio is one of the most misunderstood specifications in audio. It’s supposed to tell us how much louder the music is than the background noise of the system. On... Read more...

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