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It’s worth repeating

Paul's Posts — 09 March 2012

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It’s worth repeating

Why is it we are forgiving and tend to overlook loudspeakers as a source of coloration in our systems yet demand perfection in our electronics down to the tiniest degree?

We are convinced that tenths of a dB, a few pico seconds of jitter, a slightly different cable dielectric are all critical to our system’s success when the gross deficiencies of loudspeakers, that border on the embarrassing, go unnoticed.  You’d be lucky if your speakers were flat to within a few dB, let alone tenths of a dB.  Their phase response and time alignment are absurdly bad, atrocious actually – relative to your electronic chain.

My guess is there currently isn’t much we can do to fix this so we focus on what we can do.

It’s instructive to keep in mind the magnitude of difference between the flatness and accuracy of the single most important element in your system and everything else – if for no other reason than maintaining a healthy perspective.

You might feel better polishing your car’s chrome to a high gleam, but that won’t make your car perform any better.

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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.

(7) Readers Comments

  1. justin

    March 9, 2012 at 2:31 am

    The problem is that any jitter, colouration or distortion introduced at the start of the chain can only be amplified and made worse by the time it gets out of the speakers and into your ears. Put a crappy signal into a speaker and it will only produce a crappy sound, no matter how good it is.

    • March 9, 2012 at 6:42 am

      True but it’s still amazing to me that such subtle differences are so noticeable on such inaccurate mediums – but what it really shows is the amazing adaptive nature of the human ear. Once we establish a reference for something – any small change we hear compared to the original model is instantly picked up.

  2. wdysun

    March 9, 2012 at 4:24 am

    Hello Paul

    I agree 101% with your post today. But I want to say more: audiophiles go fancy with tweeters getting as high as 40KHz when the average listeners is not able to detect any difference above 10KHz (to be optimistic) while their mega-dollars speakers have holes and deeps (often exceeding 12 dB SPL) and ridiculous delays and phase distortions in the fundamental bass region (50Hz to 300Hz) which on average account for more than 60% of the spectral content of a music wave!
    What are we talking about? It’s also so incredible that mates spend mega-dollars for their ultimate amplifier when lower grade amplifications could do much better if driving their drivers actively. It is even more incredible that cheap drivers (expecially) woofers that play the most fundamentals, are mounted in beautiful shining boxes… most of that stuff to me is just nice furniture
    completing interior designs of our houses.

    The other topic to get into is: software. yes the damn software which is still crappy even though we are able to go up in bit depts and sampling frequency. Is that important to have a mega-dollars system when the average recording is just pure crap?
    Recently I had to admit that some 24bit/192KHz material bought from a famous online store sounded horrible if compared with the 16bit/44.1KHz counterpart mastered by DCC, MFSL and the like. Then looking at a spectrogram zoomed between 20Hz and 10Khz explained everything!

    The point is that there is no gain in high-resolution formats if the mastering involves unnecessary manipulations. There is no reason to own a 10K$ cable signal feed into it is on average devastated.

    Sorry for the strong wording
    Pietro

    • March 9, 2012 at 6:50 am

      You make some good points about mastering that I agree with but I am not sure I agree 101% with the no need for a good chain to play them on. T

      he funny thing is, even under the most adverse conditions, the $10K cables can matter because we adapt to the modelo we’re used to and anything changed in that model is picked up by our senses. Take the worst set of loudspeakers out there and connect them to a really good electronic chain and then try changing those cables – you’ll hear a difference.

  3. justin

    March 9, 2012 at 7:07 am

    Right at the moment I was about to start typing a response, my hifi froze, the music stopped and the DAC disappeared from my iPad.

    All of a sudden, this is a moot point.

    • March 9, 2012 at 8:14 am

      I am sorry, you’re right, it’s just no fun when that happens. Dennis may have found a bug that causes that and we’re testing it now.

  4. wrschrick@centurytel.net

    March 9, 2012 at 8:22 am

    I agree that the electro-mechanical links in the chain ore the weakest. You don’t have to have a “Golden Ear” to hear, instantantly, differences in Phono cartridges or loudpeaker systems. The differences are much more subtle when you change electronics. You must make many comparisons using different source material to hear differences in “High End” amplifiers. And yes, the source material is also a big problem, regardless of Vinyl, CD or Digital Downloads.

    I wish the best performances were always on the best medium, but, that is a “pipedream”

    Warrren

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