Audio

Audio


  • Nearfield listening โ€” what you hear may surprise you

    If youโ€™ve ever had the chance to spend time in a large recording studio, the sort of venue too expensive to put on a credit card, your eyes were probably first drawn to the mixing console, wide enough that it might take five engineers to operate. Next, you no doubt noticed the main speakers, those…

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  • Pimping your system (on the cheap)

    Whoever said โ€œthe best things in life are freeโ€ obviously never dabbled in high end audio. Thatโ€™s not to say you canโ€™t improve the sound of the system you already have with some judicious tweaking.

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  • The listener โ€” creative artist?

    The High-Fidelity Scene Recording technology revolutionized how music is produced, played, and experienced. From the perspective of experiencing it, to the old model of attending a live concert was added the option of listening to a recorded performance. In this new model, the listenerโ€™s role and situation were profoundly transformed; with recordings, listening has been…

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  • PS Audioโ€™s Paul McGowan: a candid interview about a man and his speaker

    Okay, so I finally caught up with Paul McGowan, but it wasnโ€™t easy. I cornered him in a room, and with a light shining on him border guard-like, I grilled him about stuff I was dying to know about him and PS Audio. Okay, thatโ€™s not quite accurate. Truth is, Paul was at his home…

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  • Are you a Believer?

    Listening to music is akin to a religious ceremony. For one, it invokes the spirits of the past, and every recording ever made is about the past. Secondly, it involves rituals. This is especially true when it comes to listening to music on my big rig downstairs. When I say big, I donโ€™t mean too…

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  • Will you commit to being artist-friendly?

    More than 30 years ago, the tabling of the Brundtland report introduced the concept of sustainable development, of which there are three pillars: economic, social, and environmental. This begat fair trade, at the time considered avant-garde, which instituted a set of policies that spanned the world and forever altered the standards we use to buy…

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  • Hitting the right (audio) balance

    The human voice is an amazing thing. I can think of no other instrument that moves our emotions and soul as powerfully. The examples are endless: Freddie Mercury, Beyoncรฉ, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby McFerrin, Luciano Pavarotti, Ariana Grandeโ€ฆ Just take your pick. And itโ€™s not just singersโ€™ voices that we respond strongly to. How about the…

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  • Measurements can suck

    ย ย ย ย  As a youngster in the late sixties, I was keenly interested in music. Virtually every day, I came home from school, and after doing my homework, spent my afternoons hanging out at the familyโ€™s Philco stereo console spinning LPs. My familyโ€™s relatively meager collection of albums consisted mainly of Momโ€™s selection of easy listening…

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  • I am not an audiophile

    I am not an audiophile, or an expert on music. I donโ€™t like being labelled. But I do love most musical genres. I fell in love with music when I was nine. โ€œThatโ€™s a young age to fall in love for the first time!โ€ I hear some of you saying. It is. But by nine…

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  • Understanding Audio, Episode โ€œWatts that you said?โ€

    Imagine youโ€™re driving down the highway at 110 km/h, when you suddenly find yourself at the wrong end of a radar gun and soon being pursued by a police car signaling you to pull over. The chesty policeman standing by your rolled-down window offers you the typical icebreaker in this sort of situation: โ€œDo you…

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  • Listen now: hereโ€™s how to set up your speakers

    Nothing is more important to the sound of your system than speaker placement. Gerard offers sage advice on getting it right. To get the best sound from your purchase and the biggest bang for the buck, you have to consider two main factors: One, is the room you place them in; you donโ€™t hear just…

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  • Stop, Hey, Whatโ€™s That Sound? Part 1

    Just as listening to bad music is no fun, itโ€™s no fun listening to bad audio, so knowing what to listen for when auditioning a component is important. โ€œStop, Hey, Whatโ€™s That Sound?โ€ is a series dedicated to recognizing aspects of good and bad sound reproduction. Once youโ€™ve settled on what features you want your…

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  • A Word with Twisted Sisterโ€™s Fearless Jay Jay French

    โ€œ I just saw Bob Dylanโ€™s show and it was the worst $@#% Iโ€™ve ever heard in my life.โ€ โ€” Jay Jay French โ€œI just saw Bob Dylanโ€™s show and it was the worst $@#% Iโ€™ve ever heard in my life. Iโ€™m saying this from a loving perspective.โ€ Thus began my interview with Jay Jay…

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  • My Audio Revelation

    Iโ€™ve always loved listening to music on a sound system, even going as far back as when all I had access to was my parentsโ€™ outdated, low-fi stereo system. It was in my collegeโ€™s music library, where I worked, that I was introduced to quality sound, although at the time I had no idea what…

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  • Music is in my Guts

    Iโ€™ve heard the comments from audio enthusiasts trying to put a positive spin on being Corona-confined: โ€œStuck inside? Hey, itโ€™s like Iโ€™ve been preparing for this all along!โ€ I know about musicโ€™s health benefits. Iโ€™ve read those credibly-sourced studies that prove how listening to music can help reduce depression, anxiety, physical pain, and enhance Alzheimer-,…

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