Paul's Posts

The logical mind never takes a vacation. I was standing in a hotel shower in Chicago, staring at the three little bottles lined up on the ledge. Body wash, conditioner,... Read more...

90/10

Building something is easy. Perfecting it is where you lose your mind. I learned this lesson decades ago when Stan and I built our first preamplifier. We had the circuit... Read more...

Pure windows

Two-channel stereo is the purest window into a musical performance, and after fifty years I am more convinced of that than ever. I fell in love with two-channel audio when... Read more...

Dinosaur footsteps

A great subwoofer for music and a great subwoofer for movies are not always the same animal, and the way you set them up should reflect that difference. In home... Read more...

Stop thinking

The moment you stop thinking about your equipment and lose yourself entirely in the music is the whole point of this hobby. I was reminded of this recently in the... Read more...

Breakthroughs

The breakthroughs that matter most in audio are rarely the ones we see coming. When I started PS Audio with Stan Warren back in 1974, the big excitement was about... Read more...

Picking a fight

Your room is either working with your speakers or against them, and most rooms are picking a fight. I have visited hundreds of listening rooms over the decades, from purpose-built... Read more...

Ears

No two people hear the same music from the same system, because no two people have the same ears. This is one of those facts that the audio industry conveniently... Read more...

Too much oxygen

Oxidation is the silent thief of audio performance, and it is robbing you right now whether you know it or not. Every metal contact in your audio system is slowly... Read more...

The master

The same digital recording can sound dramatically different depending on who handles the mastering. A HiFi Family member wrote to me recently about a cheap promotional compilation CD that somehow... Read more...

The mighty CD

Sample rate is not a measure of how good a recording sounds. This one catches people off guard, but I have heard it so many times in our listening room... Read more...

Streams

A stream is only as good as the weakest link between the server and your DAC. I remember the first time I played a downloaded high-resolution file back to back... Read more...

Geometry

The geometry of a cable matters more than most folks realize, and less than cable manufacturers want you to believe. Stan and I spent a good chunk of the early... Read more...

Shape matters

Every loudspeaker driver is a compromise between physics and the art of what sounds right. I have been staring at speaker cones and films for over fifty years, and I... Read more...

Solar Power and Your Audio System

The electricity feeding your audio system matters every bit as much as the components themselves. I know you're probably getting tired of this old broken record speech, but I can't... Read more...

Disappearing act

The highest compliment you can pay a loudspeaker is to say you can't locate it. That the music simply exists in the room, with no audible connection to the boxes... Read more...

Power!

In early 1997 I had a puzzle that wouldn't leave me alone. My stereo sounded different depending on when I listened. Late at night, everything opened up — wider stage,... Read more...

Woof!

There's a moment in certain recordings — a pipe organ hitting a low pedal note, a kick drum on a well-recorded track, the opening of Also Sprach Zarathustra — when... Read more...

Flat

Here's a number worth sitting with: ±3dB. In the world of amplifiers, that spec would be a scandal — a laughingstock. You'd return the thing (or you should). In the... Read more...

The piano

It was 1978. A small jazz club in San Luis Obispo, California. A pianist — I genuinely wish I could remember his name — playing solo. Just a Steinway grand... Read more...

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