By Paul McGowan From PS Audio

I hope March has been going well for you and you’re staying warm. We’ve already passed the daylight savings change and are heading towards spring. For those of us who tolerate the snows of winter, this is a wonderful time of year, one I look forward to, and for good reason.

The last big snow we got dumped a foot of wet, slushy, heavy muck onto our driveway, and then, overnight, the temperature dropped, cementing the mess into an impenetrable mass the length of our long driveway.

Bundled up against the cold, I fired up the old snow blower and tried to grind my way through the mess while poor Terri shoveled the front steps and porch. An entire tank of gas later (this is the last year for this beast as I am switching to electric), I am halfway down the driveway when the bolts that hold the blower’s blades together rattle loose and spew their contents onto the snow.

Of course, I don’t have any replacement hardware, and I can’t pull my car out onto the street for a trip to the local store. Out comes the shovel, and there goes my back.

That day we had to drive to the airport, hop on a plane, and fly to Montreal to set up the amazing aspen FR10s. We made it just in the nick of time.

And speaking of FR10s
This amazing and affordable speaker had the honor of making the cover of HiFi News with the headline that it sets the standard in its class!

You can download a copy of the review here. 

What’cha doing next month?

Speaking of HiFi shows, next month, on Friday, April 12th, the Chicago-based Axpona HiFi show will open its doors.

We’ll be in our same room on the main floor of the convention center.

What’ll be new? The Aspen FR5 stand-mount loudspeakers. These amazing 2-way speakers were so room-filling and extraordinary that I wrote about them in this post, entitled For The Price Of A Component.

And that’s exactly what’s so cool about these. For the price of one of our Stellar components, you can upgrade your stereo system to one of the most revealing and amazing loudspeakers I’ve yet heard. We get it that not everyone can plunk down enough green for the FR10s, but who among us wouldn’t consider the FR5s?

I hope you have a chance to visit us in Chicago and have a gander at these small miracles (though it’s unlikely we’ll be playing them in our auditorium-sized room).

Microphones and preamplifiers

At the beginning of this month I wrote a short series on something most of us really don’t think much about. Microphones. For every recording you have in your library or stream there was a microphone used to capture that sound. And microphones, like speakers, are all over the map when it comes to sound quality.

At Octave Records, we have invested wheelbarrows full of money in buying the best microphones. Why? Well, as I detail in the series, using the right microphone for the right recording of sound is perhaps the single most important aspect to capturing all that you and I value so much—the sound of live music as if the musicians were in the room with us.

The first post was on March 6th, and you can click here to begin the short series.

Gabriel Mervine rocks!
New this month from Octave Records, two new releases from one of our favorite musicians, Gabriel Mervine. Gabe’s an extraordinary musician and I had the pleasure of making both recordings using some of the very microphones discussed in the article.

To capture the warmth and sweet sound of his trumpet and coronet, we used a ribbon microphone that is capable of tremendous dynamic range. On Gabe’s follow-up album to Say Somethin’, the new See Somethin’ is a major step up in the recording arts and not just because of the microphones we used.

His first album was captured on the Sonoma system in DSD64 (1X DSD), and then mixed on an analog console, and then resampled back to DSD through an A/D converter. At the time, that was state-of-the-art for DSD capture.

Since those early days, we’ve built Octave Studios around far better and more immersive capture methods using DSD256 (4X DSD) and never going back through another A/D D/A process that loses fidelity.

Have a listen to both Gabe’s new releases: See Somethin’ and I Wish You Love. They are wonderfully expressive works that can serve as reference standards for your system. 

Until April
Spring is almost upon us! We have that plus an entire summer to look forward to. I am jazzed. I do hope you and yours are well and until next month, when I’ll reach out again, have fun and enjoy the music!

Paul McGowan

Copyright © 2024 PS Audio, All rights reserved. Our mailing address is: PS Audio4865 Sterling Dr.Boulder, CO 80301Add us to your address book