PS Audio founder and CEO, Paul McGowan, writes a daily blog: short, informative, fun, often controversial, but always interesting. Subjects range from personal stories, how to setup your system, news of the day, streaming, vinyl, tubes, transistors, loudspeakers, holographic imaging and more. Kind of like the Car Talk of audio. Not much is sacred, and there’s rarely a mention of our own products.

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Paul's Posts

Transparency and veils

Paul McGowan

Transparency is the difference between listening to sound and listening through sound. When a system is transparent, it feels like a clear window onto the recording. Every layer is visible,...

Soundstage illusion

Paul McGowan

The greatest illusion in audio is making two speakers disappear. Soundstage is the perception that music is unfolding in front of you in three-dimensional space, rather than simply emanating from...

Texture and Grain

Paul McGowan

Every recording has texture, and every system either reveals it or obscures it. Texture in music is that fine layer of information that tells us whether a violin bow is...

Dimesnionality

Paul McGowan

Stereo is more than left and right—it’s a three-dimensional window. When we describe dimensionality, we’re talking about sound that has width, depth, and height. It’s the ability of a system...

Ambience and space

Paul McGowan

Ambience is the fingerprint of the room where music was recorded. When you listen to a great live recording, you don’t just hear the instruments—you hear the hall. The reflections...

The sound of air

Paul McGowan

Air is the space above, around, and inside the music. When we talk about “air,” we mean the highest treble frequencies that give sound openness and delicacy. A system with...