Tag Archives: audio system

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Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek Audio and Paul McGowan of PS Audio, Intl.

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Polishing touches

It is always a conundrum whether to polish or rearrange a stereo system.

The first time I hear a new audio system that has yet to be dialed in I have to decide if it is close enough for a bit of polish or so far off we need to start from scratch.

We just went through this exercise at PS Audio.

Ever since we replaced the Infinity IRSV with the aspen FR30s we’ve not been happy with the system’s bottom end—frustrating because the FR30s have an extraordinary bottom end that rivals the IRSV (aspens extend down to about 23Hz in the room and are more than capable of rattling your pant leg and putting a smile on your face). Unfortunately, because of Music Room 2’s dimensional ratios (and the fact its floor is as bouncy as a spring), the best position for imaging is the worst place for the bottom end (in the case of the IRSV we simply moved the separate bass towers to where in the room we got proper bass performance at the listening position).

Music Room 3, however, is a little longer front to back and the dimensional ratios work. Those few feet of additional length are all that we needed to enjoy the aspen’s thundering bass and so they were moved.

Caleb and the guys in sales did all the heavy lifting of switching systems and rooms. When I first sat down for a listen I was duly impressed. They had done a wonderful job of setting everything up and in the right place. I whipped out the disc from The Audiophile’s Guide: The Loudspeaker, and played Gabriel Mervine’s tracks (where the Quartet is presented one instrument at a time). Sounded pretty close but not perfect.

Polish or rearrange?

For me, the easiest way to determine this is to begin with some obvious polishing steps like moving a little the loudspeakers and/or the seating position. If it feels like we’re making sufficient progress then that’s the right thing to do.

If it’s just different…..then time to start from scratch.

In the case of Music Room 3 and the aspens, all we needed was a bit of a polishing touch (truth is, these are some of the easiest speaker in the world to dial in).

If you’re in the neighborhood, due stop in and have a listen.

Blog Posts

Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek AV and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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Devilish details

They say there’s a devil in those details. That it’s awfully easy to imagine wholesale change until one rolls up their proverbial sleeves and gets going.

Which is why I recommend dedicating an entire Saturday or Sunday for making changes to your system.

Even small changes.

Simply tweaking the toe-in or out can blossom into a lot of work. Get a better center image but now you’ve lost the soundstage width. Move the speakers back towards the front wall and you increase bottom end but at the expense of depth. Move the left and right closer together and the result is better midbass coupling but what else changes?

Replace one of your components with a new one. You love what it brings to the system. Over time, the newness wears off and you begin to notice the kinks.

Time to look that devil in the details straight in the eye and get to tuning.

Over the years I have learned to apportion enough time to handle what seems at first like a quick change.

Weekends are great for helping make better a great 2-channel audio system.

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Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek AV and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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Now, this guy Paul sure is an audiophile!!! I agree with him regarding loudspeakers and set up, however, perhaps he should maybe name his newest book ” The Loudspeaker”, instead of “The Speaker”, as maybe that could be interpreted as a book about public speaking?

Order to chaos

Over the past few months I have been hard at work writing the next book in our series, The Audiophile’s Guide.

That first book, The Stereo, was an all-encompassing work covering the complete stereo system from electronics, to cables, to speakers.

This newest book, The Speaker, is a much more detailed work specific to the challenge of setting up a pair of speakers.

I can think of nothing more important in a high-end audio system than properly setting up the speakers. Even with the greatest electronics in the world, a less-than-great setup saps the life out of the music.

One of the issues I kept running into during the research and writing phase was the amount of opinion and chaos among audiophiles as to the best way to set up speakers.

(Wait! Audiophiles, opinions, and chaos?)

Fortunately, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and I have confirmed it’s not a train!

Seriously, this is one exciting project for me to work on. We’ve just finished an extraordinary group of recordings in the new Octave Studio that will accompany the book in a step-by-step fashion and I cannot wait to share it with you.

Fingers crossed for a July 2022 launch.

Blog Posts

Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek AV and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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Stand out products

When a piece of stereo gear sonically singles itself out in an audio system it is typically not a good thing. What we hope for is a synergistic pairing of components that benefit the whole.

Sure, it’s not only alright but actually welcomed when we can add a product that elevates the whole. But then elevating the whole is the point, right?

I remember years ago when I experimented with a Teac Dolby noise reduction system designed to “eliminate hiss, pops, and unwanted artifacts of sound.”

Unfortunately, it was a stand out product that eliminated more than simply unwanted noise.

I love visually attractive stand out products.

I am not so sure about those that sonically stand out from the rest of the system.

For me, the beauty of music is found in the perfection of the whole.

Blog Posts

Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek Audio and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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Over-etched sound

Back in the days when movie moguls like Louis B. Mayer and Samuel Goldwyn ruled Hollywood, cinematographers used soft lenses to enhance the beauty of their starlets.

The softening of the face was thought to add to the star’s beauty because we could not see skin imperfections like pores, wrinkles, and blemishes.

Today, we use razor-sharp lenses and apply makeup to remove the anomalies.

Both techniques were aimed at the same goal. The reduction of imperfections.

We can relate these practices to our own passions in audio.

Like an over-etched or over-sharpened image, some combinations of stereo cables and transducers go too far by unnaturally emphasizing certain areas of sound (cables by means of unequal attrition and transducers by specific addition).

When this happens we’re at first enamored by the increase in detail but over time we’re less drawn into the music.

High levels of detail that are not in balance with the overall presentation of the music can act as a harsh light that makes us squint.

Perfection in an audio system is found when we achieve the perfect balance.

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Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek Audio and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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The special person

Just because someone hears a high-end audio system—marveling at how lifelike and far from what they listen to it is—rarely does it equate to them running down to the store and buying one.

It takes a special person to become inspired to the point of taking the leap that changes their life.

Is it one out of a thousand that hears a great stereo system and decides for themselves that this is worth their time?

I don’t have any insight into the numbers.

What I do know is that it takes a very special person to care enough about the quality of their musical reproduction system to invest their energies into building one for themselves.

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Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek AV and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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Preconception

What an interesting idea. To preconceive of something. See the future in your mind’s eye. Imagine how something is going to sound.

When one of our engineers like, Darren, Bob, Chris, or Chet come to me with their grand vision of how a proposed new stereo product is going to sound or a new design is going to look, they have this amazing preconception of the final result. They share it with me in such a way that I too get excited of the prospects for its end results despite the fact it doesn’t actually exist.

And then the long weeks and months of hard work begin. Work needed to turn a vision into a reality.

Rarely does the finished product match exactly the preconception, but more often than not it’s at or beyond the level of expectation.

And when we exceed our expectations of a future vision that’s when it feels like magic.

Whether you’re dreaming of building a high end audio system or imagining how much better it will sound by swapping out this product or that, the act of preconception is how we establish the dreams that become our reality.

Imagine that!

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Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek AV and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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Critical thinking

You can find information and knowledge on just about any subject in the world. Just Google it. Have a math problem? There are online calculators at the click of a mouse. Need a chemical formula? No problem. Design a room for best stereo sound quality? It’s a few clicks of the mouse away.

With a bit of time and persistence, the knowledge of the world is at our fingertips.

What the immense resources of our connected world bring to the party is only going to become more easily accessed over time. What’s not available online, however, is the ability to think.

Critical thinking skills seem to be rather scarce these days. And, that’s a shame because even with all the resources on the planet if one doesn’t know how to use reason and logic to solve a problem, we’ll never get to where we want to go.

Take for example the skill required to source and set up a high end audio system. Because each environment is so different it becomes necessary to not only have the knowledge needed to cobble the right separates and interconnects together, but the ability to think about how to best optimize the system within the room.

Understanding the why of how things work is the first step to thinking through a problem.

Or, take as another example an engineer. When we hire engineers and programmers we evaluate them more on their ability to think as opposed to the knowledge in their heads. Knowledge can be added or easily Googled. Thinking is a learned skill that some have invested in while most have not.

I won’t get into a rant about the state of our school systems with respect to the teaching (or lack thereof) of critical thinking skills. I get that the education machine struggles with just teaching the basics of maths, language, and history.

If you have a choice, go for the assets that have developed thinking rather than simply spewing information.

Information is easy. Solving problems is where the fun is.

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Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek AV and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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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 of white crystals as “salt” is extremely helpful at the dinner table.

But what happens when we label stereo equipment with opinions? For example, labeling a particular phono cartridge as wooden or tight-assed can destroy a product’s reputation. Imagine taking home an expensive moving coil cartridge and on your audio system, it doesn’t sound right. You label it with your opinion and it is forever tainted—even if all that might have been wrong was your ability to set it up properly.

I remember the first time I heard about Cambridge Audio products. Asked what their shtick was I was told it earned the label: cheap gear. Good, but cheap. It wasn’t until I spent the time to audition their products myself that I realized the label was not only unwarranted but unfair. Not because it wasn’t inexpensive gear (it was) but because that label assigned it a low value in people’s minds. I began to support the brand by telling people it was an exceptional bargain.

PS Audio products were for years labeled as “The poor man’s Audio Research”. I guess that’s a compliment, though I probably could have picked a better label.

I guess my point is we should be careful about the labels we assign products and certainly people.

They have a habit of sticking.

Blog Posts

Asheville, Walnut Cove, Biltmore Forrest and Western North Carolina’s Audio and Home Theater specialists present Cane Creek AV and Paul McGowan – PS Audio, Intl.

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I’ve heard the PS Audio system at their previous location and very good, although that room was too small for the Infinity IRS V loudspeakers.

Reference

The three P20 Power Plants, two BHK monoblock amplifiers, 12 channels of 1,000 watt amplification, the Infinity IRSV and all the other peripherals to be found in Music Room Two form the basis of the PS Audio Reference System.

Is it the best system in the world? Of course not. There’s likely no single system that might qualify for that honor.

What we can say, however, is that it is a reference-quality system. And what does that actually mean?

In my view, a reference system has a number of requirements. It must be neutral, full range, highly resolving, unflappable, and most important, reliably utilize all its merits to test the identity, strength, quality, and purity of any connected gear. In other words, it cannot impart its identity on devices under test.

While constant improvements to the system are expected—even demanded—those improvements must always be made with the goal of neutrality without suffering sonic bias.

A true reference system is different than a maxed out home audio system. In the former, we want limitless unbiased resolving power where, in the latter, we accept bias in favor of knocking our socks off.

You probably don’t have a reference quality system at home, but in the long run, that’s likely a good thing.