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My first separates

Paul's Posts — 02 September 2012

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My first separates

In 1973 my system consisted of a Kenwood integrated amplifier and pair of Phased Array loudspeakers (precursors to the Dahlquist brand).  The Kenwood had very little power to drive these loudspeakers, sounded pretty bad, and I got convinced by one of my buddies to move to separates and get rid of the integrated.  Soon I had replaced the Kenwood with a Dynaco 70 tube power amplifier and a Pat 4 solid state preamp – both David Hafler designs.  This change in system was a revelation to me, but one that lasted less than a month.

The tube power amp was a nice change but it still didn’t have enough power to really fill the room with effortless sound.  Enter the Phase Linear 400.  Good grief.  This Bob Carver designed monster just rocked my world and probably changed everything I know and think about high-end audio, the need for headroom and gobs of watts for speakers.  Such is the power of separates, which is what we’re onto in the last few days of posts.

Yesterday I mentioned that the value of separates can be broken down into two categories: functionality and performance.  From the quick story I just related above you can see I went from needing greater functionality to needing better performance within the span of less than 30 days and all was accomplished with separates.  This is the practical and makes-sense side of separates and why separates remain a strong category.  But with the advent of the new paradigm of digital audio do we really need separates and will they remain a strong category?  I don’t think they will in the same way we think of them now and so let’s dig a bit deeper to get to the bottom of this thought.

I am going to take a big step off a giant cliff when I suggest this but here goes.  It is now entirely possible and close to practical to eliminate everything in the system but the loudspeaker itself.  No cables (save for the power cord), no power amps, no preamps, no disc players, no nothing.  You would need your media on a storage device like a hard drive but, of course, that too has a short life as we move everything to the cloud and internet speeds take a major leap.

As a thought just imagine for a moment that this was the new way we go (it’s not, don’t panic).  The built in power amplifier is perfectly matched to the speakers, as is the D to A, the wireless connection, the room EQ – well everything is now perfect.  Your control point is a hand held mobile device or who knows what and your music is being reproduced perfectly in the room.  What comes out of your speakers into your world is perfect music reproduced in a way that brings musical nirvana into the home.  Far fetched, yes.  Pipe dream, no.

Now, compare that to what we have with separates today: cables, power cords, boxes, long snakes running down the living room floor, discs, turntables and so on.

The loudspeaker is the end result of anything we attempt to do when playing our music.  As an electronics manufacturer I build products and separates that serve loudspeakers and allow you, the Audiophile, to mix and match to best play music through the loudspeakers you have.  That model will be with us for a long time to come, but I can clearly see where it is heading.

Now before you have me tarred and feathered, remember I am the guy who first introduced the idea of the separate D to A converter to the world – turning an existing separate (the CD player) into a two piece affair (transport and DAC) that magnified the separates market even more than it was.

Now that I have probably upset half of my readers, we’ll delve a little into the more practical tomorrow – because separates have their place and will continue to be important.  I just think in a different way.

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About Author

Paul McGowan

Paul McGowan is the CEO and co-founder of PS Audio Inc. a Boulder Colorado design and manufacturing company of high-end audio products and services. McGowan has been designing and building high-end products for nearly 40 years. Hobbies include skiing, music, hiking, artisan bread baking, kick boxing and cooking. He lives in Boulder Colorado with his wife Terri and his 4 sons.

(18) Readers Comments

  1. Soundminded

    September 2, 2012 at 7:44 am

    “I am going to take a big step off a giant cliff when I suggest this but here goes. It is now entirely possible and close to practical to eliminate everything in the system but the loudspeaker itself.”

    That’s one small step for manufacturers, one giant leap for audiophilekind. The combination of different functions performed in one enclosure is the general trend of electronics. Only high end audio seems to have bucked it just like it has bucked every other trend in electronics. It’s hardly much of a change from active speakers to active speakers with more electronics packed into the same enclosure like a wi-fi transceiver, dsp, preamp, equalizers, a computer, and a lot more. Once upon a time a television camera, a VTR, and a television set were huge boxes requiring muscle to move them, power galore to fire them up. Today anyone with a smart phone carries something around in his shirt pocket smaller than a pack of playing cards that does it all, does it better than technology of decades past, and does a whole lot more. This trend has been coming for a very long time.

    However, the realities of acoustics will still dictate the solutions to as yet unsolved problems. This may be facillitated as consumers come to realize that these products are now commoditized. Perhaps the industry will finally get on to the business of answering the real questions it hasn’t adequately addressed yet. In 75 years will people look back on what is the best available equipment today with the same fascination and bemusement as we regard those old Crossley, Atwater Kent, and Capehart consoles? Here’s something to think about. The attached link shows the sound systems used by several noted reviewers. What struck me was not how different they all are but how similar. They are all comprised of variants of exactly the same products. All are eyesores that are horriffic to look at, ghastly in their enormous cost, and they do not perform their intended function very well. Which of the owners and users of them will stand up and admit it? Which of them has the guts to say that those who built their equipment were me-too-ers trying to milk an antiquated inadequate technology for all it’s worth rather than setting out on a bold new path that leads to something better?

    http://www.positive-feedback.com/staff.htm

    • coppy

      September 2, 2012 at 9:31 am

      Soundminded,

      Now that link to the reviewer’s systems was interesting. I thought your description harsh, but having reviewed them all, maybe I’m not an audiophile after all. What a jumble of junk. Now I see why some obsess over all those silly tweeks. I’ve probably got more than $70K invested but it’s done nicely in our Colonial Williamsburg style living room and sounds great. I see much of my own equipment in their lists, Wilson Sasha speakers, Conrad-Johnson’s best tube and solid state pre, phono and mono block amps, etc. These folks must not have much social life to live in that mess. Ever see pictures of Dave Wilson’s living room?
      Thanks for the insight and sorry to any folks I’ve unintentionally offended.

      • Soundminded

        September 2, 2012 at 11:59 am

        “What a jumble of junk.”

        I didn’t want to be the first one to say it but that is exactly what I was thinking too. They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I suppose in the beholder’s ear too. Judged by how much pleasure they give these may be a great investment, that’s an individual call. My aunt got endless pleasure from her $75 portable stereo record changer system and later her $200 all in one cd player. She had thousands of LPs and CDs. Those were great investments for her. But when judged by the sound of live acoustic musical instruments, the sounds I enjoy and hear both at concerts and in my home, this equipment does not perform well, does not sound to my ears like what I hear live and want to hear from recordings. I think to anyone with normal hearing they would be able to quickly make the distinction although they might not much care. Given the cost of this equipment that’s more than disappointing, for me it’s not acceptable. Even when I had vast discretionary money and may one day have again, that equipment, that type of equipment is of no interest to me. Besides, buying it only encourages the manufacturers to make more of them. :-)

  2. adam75

    September 2, 2012 at 10:13 am

    I agree with you about the active speaker/dsp being the likely way forward. Mind you, they all ready exist on the shape of products from meridian and genelec and probably others. And of course trinnov and others make dac/ DRC/ crossover modules. And conventional active speakers with a built in dac are twoapenny in pro audio.
    I can’t see why speaker crossovers should be done by electronic components in this day and age any more than anti imaging filters, or why anyone would wish to miss out on the possibilities afforded by DRC. Then again I can’t see why anyone would want to make a NOS dac or a valve amp…..

  3. September 2, 2012 at 10:55 am

    Adam75. Absolutely. There are many Pro-Audio brands already on that (even in HI-Fi world as we know).
    Of course that removes the “joy” (? and the business based on such behaviour) of finding the perfect-system (perfect… for some time, always for sometime), which is, by itself, a pure hobby.
    At the end, it is not much more than equalizing through passive components (cables, etc.) or active (tubes, etc.).

    Like making a neverending personal puzzle… Good luck and good amount of money they will need.

    But there are a few companies which launched their own complete solutions, assuming the total responsability of the results: put the blame on them, and only on them, if you don´t like the sonic results… or to some recording engineers :-) .

    I have commented about the necessity of complete systems to achieve the best more accurate sonic results (i.e. serious technical optimization). No one end-user can do that, in general, as they do not know, technically what they are doing… it is the typical amateur-approach. And Hi-End Audio market, in general, has enjoyed the economic benefits of such “empirical” approach: trial&error, trial&error, even when they think they got something… it only lasts a while.

    No one Ferrari, nor Lamborghini models will be ever improved by their owners. If an end-user is able to do that, he should be working for those companies !

    A change in mentality is necessary IF the final goal is truly (I doubt, nowadays is just staying-alive) to get the most accurate sound. From both: manufacturers and end-users. But manufacturers do not want to move there (betraying the principle of their “only music matters”) because while there is a benefit… who cares?

    Personally, Hi-End is an old and bad additon of disconnected technologies, and the sum of the parts provides suspicious results. But there are some manufacturers who already have a feet on that since long time ago.
    I left my typewriter awhile… but I can understand that some people feel fear of knowing how OpenOffice, Microsoft word, etc, work. No problem from my side. I call it “romantic ignorance”.

  4. Bassman23

    September 2, 2012 at 11:39 am

    Find an in-wall powered loudspeaker using DSP to match the room and fed wirelessly by a source hidden away, and the WAF will explode!

  5. dr.goodears

    September 2, 2012 at 2:13 pm

    Hey Paul,

    As you are aware, Bob Stuart has taken us a good step towards your perceived futuristic entertainment system model, the removal of all the clutter in the room is a very appealing modern interior design concept, but do you really believe that wireless digital audio signal transmission will prove to be a stable and reliable state-of-the-art high-fidelity music solution?

    • September 3, 2012 at 6:59 am

      I do, yes. We actually have a dedicated wireless solution we’re experimenting with right now that’s amazing in my opinion – although it needs further work – it’s so stable we”re thinking of calling it a “wireless cable”. Certainly the way we’re doing it allows for nearly identical performance. It’s still early, but yes, this too will become commonplace.

  6. September 2, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    Audio files looks impressive, 600 Mb for a CD. To play it takes an hour.
    600 Mb per hour is not a demanding task for a computer or a network.

    Red book audio is playing 16-bit PCM audio at 44.1 kHz.
    This is 705600 bit/s or 0.67 Mbit/s.
    We have stereo so 1.34 Mbit/s.
    A Wi-Fi network (802.11 G) has a gross throughput of 53 Mbit/s (network speed is expressed in bits per second, not bytes).
    If we assume an overhead of 2, playing Redbook audio still fits in.
    Even hires audio e.g. 24/192 kHz requiring 8.8 Mbit/s, fits in.
    Upgrading to 802.11 N might help too as it has a bigger bandwidth. This is not new. This has been available for years.
    But do not expect to see too much of this at CES or such kind of shows. LOL…

  7. Laura

    September 2, 2012 at 9:29 pm

    Perhaps I’m in the minority, but I have no desire to give up my separates. I listen to vinyl 95% of the time because I strongly prefer the sound–more natural and real to my ears. A turntable and phonostage have been part of my system since the mid 60′s and I don’t see that changing.

    • September 3, 2012 at 7:01 am

      I am with you Laura and I don’t think that’s going to be required. Hopefully a solution that allows us to have our vinyl cake and eat it as well will happen – I have confidence it will. But let’s face it, what you love about this is the way it sounds and the results you get – no? I realize the ritual of the record is also interesting and fun and no one would want to eliminate that – but it can be done with less clutter.

  8. oliver T. Finch

    September 2, 2012 at 10:05 pm

    An interesting idea but at the present state of affairs with digital, a long way off. It took a quarter century for people to realize that perfect sound forever was a joke played on a mostly gullible public. There was a minority which used it’s ears rather than company PR propaganda and did not fall for it. Every one does not hear the same that is why some cannot hear the shortcomings of digital and still swear by it. HDCD has improved the sound but not enough to impress the people who can hear the difference. Like I mentioned before digital will equal analogue when sampling rate will become infinite but then it will not be digital anymore it will have become analogue. And as long as analogue will exist separates will exist except for those who either cannot hear the difference or are easily swayed by PR propaganda. Regards.

    • September 3, 2012 at 7:06 am

      Oliver, I am not so sure I completely agree with you but I understand your thought and you’re mostly right. Where we would disagree is the timing – I believe we’re closer than you may think. But an integrated solution does not depend on digital – it’s just one way to go about it.

      In the end, you have to admit that what we want is less clutter, more enjoyment. No?

  9. September 3, 2012 at 4:01 am

    Laura… like you (you are a segment of those already HI-End clients) there are many, mostly they belong to the original generation. Because of that, they don’t want to change/update their minds, they are already used to some rutin. Rutin is difficult to change. It is not bad, as no time is dedicated to investigate further… but just to enjoy music in a way.
    Because of that, you cannot see (nor interested in) what advanced technology offers. Nothing to discuss here: just to let you know that such technology exists, that it blows away in terms of accuracy whatever has been known. If you started smoking a specific cigarette brand, you will probably continue being faithful to it. Same like drinking some milk brand, etc. Or when you first listened to a certain Opera version: probably the first one will be the best.
    In fact, among other reasons, because of such behaviour like yours, the industry has not adopted that technology: you can see the projection of your words in what the old Hi-End Audio markets are offering… however, slowly, they are starting to see the new generation of potential clients and what other brands are offering (Sonos, etc.). Plus, some advances (taken from computer and software, etc.) are added but just in homeopathy dosis.
    Do not worry, because such technology already exists (and is much cheaper, aaaargh!), b) when the Hi-End audio brands, notice that enough people are going towards such tendency, they will start to give it to you and embrace it proclaming that this is the edge of technology.
    At the end, there are still people who use fountain-pens (or merely, collect them…).
    This is not bad for those of us who approached to Hi-End audio looking for the latest advance in technology to reproduce encoded music… we all know that traditions are hard to change.
    But some of us prefer to adopt the latest technology to reach Mars. You can still try it with traditional airplanes… Unfortunately they will never get out from our blue-world.

  10. Soundminded

    September 3, 2012 at 7:04 am

    Digital streaming may be good enough for NASA to send back high resolution panoramic images of Mars but for some audiophiles they will find fault with it somewhere and tell us vinyl phongraph records sound better. I’m of the belief that some vinyl records do sound better but not because of shortcomings of digital technology (although many early a/d and d/a converters were flawed.) By the time recordings on vinyl were reissued on cd the source tapes had deteriorated. And ironically in the types of sound reproducing systems we use, dynamic compression used in vinyl out of necessity was an advantage. By increasing the gain at the end of every musical phrase, there’s more evident reverberation heard from vinyls. Also re-issues of vinyl on cd were often haphazardly and cheaply dashed off for the nostalgia market without any of the careful mastering the originals got.

    The first time I heard a cd, I knew it was a winner. No pops or clicks, no wear, not easy to damage, portable, IMO the technology just blows vinyl away. I’ve got roughly 3000 vinyls and 3000 cds. Despite the fact that I think my best record players are very fine I almost always listen only to cds. It appears that the end of the physical object to constitute a recording is already on us. I’m sure among the tools in that swiss army knife Paul posted about will be a transmitter to encode/generate and receiver for digital transmissions from legacy playback devices like phonographs, CDs, and magnetic tape to his all in one unit. WiFi for HiFi.

    • Laura

      September 3, 2012 at 8:48 am

      It is not a matter of not wanting to change, it is about the music and what I hear from my system. Newer technology or “better” technology does not always equal better sound. I’ve heard a lot of great digital systems at shows and in friend’s homes, but music on vinyl played on a high quality system still sounds more real and natural to me.

      Just as the first CDs suffered from the lack of quality control, vinyl went through a period of inferior vinyl and poor quality control. Vinyl’s resurgence has brought back an emphasis on quality control with several labels and pressing plants using the highest quality virgin vinyl. Chad’s Analogue Productions is an example. I have tons of vinyl with dead quiet backgrounds — no pops or clicks. Yes, they are easier to damage, but with proper care, a good vacuum record cleaner and after market sleeves, one can keep their vinyl in great shape.

      Paul, less clutter would be good. I would be interested in an integrated amp with a high quality phono stage and DAC. The quality would have to be as good as I can get/afford with separates. The Swiss Army Knife good enough approach would not be good enough for me.

      Happy Labor Day to all.

      • Soundminded

        September 3, 2012 at 10:10 am

        I know that I can never convince anyone who loves their vinyl phonograph records more than any other recordings that digital technology is better and frankly I don’t intend to try. I had my own problems accepting digital recordings but they weren’t the same as other people’s. Even after understanding how it worked, knowing the theory, doing the math, it bothered me terribly that the product of human effort, especially where it rises to the level of a fine art could be reduced to a series of numbers, even if that meant a large number of numbers. It was an idea I just couldn’t accept. It took me a long time to come around to it but eventually I saw the inescapable truth in it. There is a limit to human perception and once you have technology that is sensitive beyond that limit, that’s all there is.

        Here’s an experiment you can try. Take any record, any turntable, tonearm, cartridge, preamp, and burn a cd from that record. Play it back not on an audiophile cd player (many are all screwed up IMO) but on an ordinary one (right now I like the 24 bit 192 khz chips in Toshiba DVD players often no more than $30 for the entire player) and see if you can hear the difference upon direct comparison. If it’s different, it should be at least very close. This is with consumer grade equipment, in a laboratory I’m certain they can be made indistinguishable. The opposite cannot be done. There are CDs whose range is so great no vinyl record cutter can capture it, no cartridge could track it if you had such a record. I made a direct comparison between a Delos vinyl of Carol Rosenberger playing Water Music on a Bosendorfer and the CD recording of it. I could not tell the difference. That surprised me.

        Whether vinyl analog, magnetic analog, magnetic, digital, CD, streaming digital, these are just systems for the storage and retrieval of analog electrical signals. The mechanical purely analog systems are very primitive. They cost and difficulty of exploiting them to their limit is great. The electro-optical system much less so and quite acceptable to me. The purely electrical digital medium is ideal.

        As I see it, the digital system does not create audible problems in itself, it rather reveals problems in other equipment. These problems have not been addressed yet. They go to the heart of hearing and acoustics. I’m sorry to say it but it doesn’t look to me like these problems will be solved anytime soon. Those with the brains to work on it are more interested in other things. And those who are working on audio equipment are entirely preoccupied with tweaking what they already have, not in breaking new ground.Enjoy your vinyls. BTW, I’m still partial to wet chemistry photography. I don’t know if digital has eclipsed it yet but if it hasn’t, it’s just a matter of time. There’s no doubt it will surpass it in performance by far.

  11. bondmanp

    September 5, 2012 at 12:58 pm

    Well, no tar and feathers, Paul, but there is one reason why your predictions may be off the mark. Just like people have preferences in food, automobiles and music, so too, do people have preferences in audio. I might love the way a Meridian CD player sounds, but prefer amplifiers from Conrad Johnson, turnatables from Clearaudio, and speakers from Vandersteen. I am certain that each of these very fine firms has their own concept of what a total system packaged within a loudspeaker should sound like, but I would expect few individual audiophiles to share their views. The ability to use component selection to achieve the desired sonic results means the ability to choose each component separately. When ATC offered mainly powered speakers, they soon realized that they were losing sales to consumers who might like the ATC speakers, but preferred to use another brand of amplifier. Now ATC sells both active and passive speakers. Just as some prefer a Big Mac to a Whopper, there will always be a segment of the market that enjoys the art of assembling a synergistic system that produces the sonic results they uniquely desire.

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