Paul's Posts

We ultimately judge the performance of our system but how closely it brings us to music. Real music. So, if in 1981 we had systems that brought us close to... Read more...

Changing tubes

In my many videos and blog posts about changing tired vacuum tubes, I am continually surprised at the variety of answers. They range from heck yeah to hell no; from... Read more...

The price of skill

I have always been fascinated by the skill required to make good bread. With but only four ingredients (water, flour, salt, and leaven) hundreds of different bread types can be... Read more...

Something different

I have been writing a daily blog post, Paul's Post, since May of 2011. By my calculation, that's ten years. In those ten years, I haven't missed a day of... Read more...

Breaking the chain

We work so hard to build a perfect audio equipment chain. It pains us to think about breaking that chain. I am often asked about the best means of interconnecting... Read more...

NAS vs. internal

A growing trend in media servers is to employ the use of a NAS rather than rely upon the built in HD inside of a music server. It's probably not... Read more...

Laying your bedrock

At the heart of every high-end audio system lies its foundation, its bedrock upon which everything else in the system stems from. Like a home, the stronger its foundational bedrock... Read more...

The 30 second rule

My dear friend, conductor Lowell Graham has what he calls his 30-second rule. "If something does not grab me in in the first 30 seconds of listening, I do not... Read more...

Pleasure level

Sometimes I find myself wondering whether or not what I am listening to is any good. If it only sounds marginally acceptable it might be the way the artist and... Read more...

Bliss

Yesterday's post was about chills and that got me thinking this morning about bliss. Bliss describes a state of perfect happiness. It's a moment where one is oblivious of everything... Read more...

Spine chills

Just walked out of the listening room after having auditioned two mix versions of a new song for Octave Records. Wow. Chills up my spine. I wonder what it is... Read more...

McCartney and Rubin

My son, Scott is a fan of Hulu television. I haven't spent much time exploring it because I don't watch much television. Sometimes though, a show or two is good... Read more...

Predators

Ok, this is nothing more than a personal rant so if you're not in the mood let's connect tomorrow. I cannot imagine any of us that have not gotten at... Read more...

Edge cases

Events that occur around the edges of normalcy are often remarkable enough to make news, like the centenarian who smoked and drank their entire life. Novel and perhaps newsworthy, hardly... Read more...

Does gold matter?

Most high-end audio equipment uses a microscopically thin layer of gold plating on their connectors. We certainly do. It's what's expected. And the general consensus in the audiophile community is... Read more...

New info

When a particular piece of gear opens up the sound enough to hear something you hadn’t before, it likely did that not by digging deeper into the music, but by... Read more...

Pricing models

As of late, there's been some discussion on the forums about the model we use for product pricing. From what I can ascertain, the general view seems to be companies... Read more...

It's the setting that matters

If I am critically listening it's important that the setting be right and that I am comfortable with my surroundings. That comfort level matters for me because in order to... Read more...

Dither

The dictionary has several meanings to the word dither. The most common is to be indecisive. The second meaning is more related to what interests us: to add white noise.... Read more...

Labels

Labels are necessary for communication yet offered without thought of consequences they can be destructive. There's no harm in labeling sodium chloride as table salt. In fact, labeling a shaker... Read more...

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