The traditional route traveled by aspiring audio engineers is school. Learn your basics then move on to higher-level classes in mathematics, physics, semiconductors, circuits, and so on. When you come out of school you’re, well, somewhat useless—a head filled with a lot of unconnected information waiting to be used.
What those fresh out of school lack, of course, is experience.
As most of my readers know I am not an advocate for traditional schools. In my view, they got about learning the wrong way. Instead of a hands on approach backed by classwork explaining what’s happening, they put the proverbial cart in front of the horse by cramming your head full of information before telling you what to do with it.
Clearly, this works for some. Just not me.
If you’re interested in my rebel views on the subject I would encourage you to watch this short video I put together while standing atop the PS Audio World Headquarters amongst a forest of solar panels.
What’s your experience with the way education systems work?
Opinions. We’ve all got them and most of us are eager to share.
Do opinions matter? I suppose the answer is where in the pecking order they come from. The opinion of a company’s president matters more than that of the shipping clerk.
Or does it?
Why do we value one opinion or idea over another? Perhaps the shipping clerk has an opinion that makes more sense than that of the president’s. Albert Einstein was little more than a run-of-the-mill clerk in a Swiss patent office. We all know how his opinion of how the world works was spot on compared to the physicists of the day—physicists whose opinions mattered (we like to refer to their opinions as theories, yet they are still just opinions until proven as fact).
If there were any aspect of PS Audio’s success in the high end audio marketplace I could point to, it would have to be our willingness to elicit and listen to the opinions of our customers and team members, the group I like to call our Hi-Fi Family. Some of the best ideas we have ever profited from were based on the opinions of others. From making Stellar products full size after a long tradition of half-size products (an idea put forward by Walter Liederman) to building AC regenerators instead of power conditioners (an idea first proposed by Mark Schifter and Doug Goldberg) and countless others from family members from around the world, opinions matter.
Not all opinions make sense, but we’ve always found that an openness to outside suggestions enriches our lives as much as those of our extended family members.
Thanks for being there.
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