There's a good chance you've heard a 50-year-old recording in the last month, if not more recently than that. Plenty of recordings in the last century or even half century are still great to listen to on a hifi system, and worth revisiting even today in the 2020s. Think of one vintage recording you like. Now imagine that recording taking place in today's music scene, using today's computer-based recording technology, with today's engineers embracing modern concerns. What are the chances this rec...
May 12, 2021•1 hr 30 min•Season 1Ep. 37
Hifi audio can be finicky. Quite a few things can get in the way of showing off the potential magic of a component, making the buying process a rather maddening endeavor. Whether it's that the component isn't burned in yet, or it needs cabling with different electrical qualities, or whether, once inserted into a system, it then points to and shows off a weakness somewhere else in the chain. These are just some of the issues that get in the way of a new owner falling in love with a piece of gear,...
May 05, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 36
The language of amplifiers is often spoken using terms like noise, harmonics, load, phase, bandwidth and more. From the perspective of an amplifier designer, the discussion of noise is paramount. Noise affects all segments of a circuit and can generate from many different sources. The Hifi Podcast's own amplifier design wizard Darren takes us back into noise land to look at the different types of noise coming from different places in the circuitry, and explains which types are more benign than o...
Apr 28, 2021•2 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 35
Resident speaker guru Chris Brunhaver is back with a wide ranging discussion (no surprise there) with the guys about what's going on currently in the world of speaker design. Multiple pole gaps, magnetic speaker parts, woven poly cones and hysteresis.... sounds about right for a visit from Chris. Also in this episode, listener questions about woofer movement when playing back records and about how to set up a listening environment with no sweet spot are answered. Be sure to listen to the end, wh...
Apr 21, 2021•2 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 34
If you’ve ever heard to a locomotive passing left to right in your listening room before, you know there are some cool experiences to be had as an audiophile where music doesn’t even factor in. The great thing about this audiophile hobby is how stinkin’ broad it is and capable of making all kinds of interests and rabbit holes rewarding on their own. It’s true that there is a bit of disdain shown in some areas of the audiophile sphere for folks who would rather listen to gear than music, but in t...
Apr 14, 2021•1 hr 45 min•Season 1Ep. 33
One has an audiophile dad, and the other's father is a composer, conductor and music professor. Both spent teenage years chasing better sound and experimenting with audio gear. Each has a unique taste for music, informed by years of aural experiences. In this week's episode of The Hifi Podcast, hosts Darren and Duncan walk down memory lane as each shares the story of how he became an audiophile. Purely for entertainment, this diversion from the usual audio topics still attracts some interesting ...
Apr 07, 2021•2 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 32
It's a specification you see a lot when shopping for preamplifiers and amplifiers for a high end audio system: input and output impedance, expressed in the ohms. Watts are much more easy to understand relating to eventual experience, as well as frequency response bandwidth. But impedance? If you've ever wondered what sonic effect input and output impedance have and what role they play, settle down for this one because Darren explains it all. The discussion of impedance ultimately brings up capac...
Mar 31, 2021•1 hr 36 min•Season 1Ep. 31
“You can’t handle the truth!” is a phrase that comes to mind on the topic of the revealing nature of a hifi system. Sometimes, we don’t want the actual reality of a crash cymbal in our listening rooms. Have you ever heard a crash cymbal from the “business end,” i.e. away from the drummer? In hifi audio, many paths lead to the same place, and many tweaks and changes can get you there in a unique way. There’s no reason a system must have all distortions completely neutralized, laying bare only the...
Mar 24, 2021•1 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 30
Noise, noise noise. It's all noise. To the serious audiophile, reducing noise at every point of a stereo system is job #1. Compression artifacts keep us from touching MP3s with a ten foot pole. Digital streams must contain vanishing amounts of jitter. Conversion to analog requires careful filtering. Interconnects should reject RF and EMI, and hold their own in the vicinity of power cables. Power cables shield the system from the outside world. Mechanical isolation disconnects components from vib...
Mar 17, 2021•2 hr 15 min•Season 1Ep. 29
What would it be like if the deleterious effects of room boundaries and interaction were a thing of the past? In the future, will audiophiles have the same problems we do now, or will we be arguing about the best-sounding audio software for our brain implants? Audiophiles tend to get bogged down in debate over our here-and-now problems like whether to bi-amp or what speaker cabinets are more inert than others. It can be a fun exercise to imagine the future possibilities with an audio buddy, and ...
Mar 10, 2021•2 hr 7 min•Season 1Ep. 28
In this week’s podcast, speaker expert and PS Audio design engineer Chris Brunhaver stops by once again to chat about his favorite topic: Photography. Just kidding, of course. Chris’ insights about how speakers work, what companies make what materials for whom and his seemingly endless and encyclopedic knowledge of the speaker industry are once again in the spotlight as hosts Darren and Duncan pepper him with questions about all things speakers. The guys also tackle a listener question about buy...
Mar 03, 2021•2 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 27
In the history of hifi audio, there have been many more truly small companies than those that can be considered large for the industry. There are specific pros and cons to both, and in this episode of The Hifi Podcast, hosts Darren and Duncan discuss the topic at length. Small companies like Morrison Audio or Linkwitz Labs can offer products that require more knowledge and setup than products from, say Bowers & Wilkins or Magnepan. The resulting sound can be exquisite, and offer a unique cha...
Feb 24, 2021•1 hr 47 min•Season 1Ep. 26
Just outside PS Audio headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, lives one of the better recording studios in the area, called Coupe Studios. Between the audiophile equipment company and the recording studio lies a creek. Which seems like such a perfect analog for the knowledge barrier that exists between audiophiles and the recording world. Priorities among the two entities when it comes to design and execution are completely different, yet at a point some of the goals are the same. It's not surprising...
Feb 17, 2021•2 hr 27 min•Season 1Ep. 25
The addition of a subwoofer or subwoofers to a hifi system can be game-changing. Frequencies all over the spectrum can be made more clear and understandable with the support of existing sub frequencies to complete the transient music information. But none of that happens until the sub or subs are integrated properly with the speakers, blended in a way that their waves add to rather than detract from the main speakers. In this episode of The Hifi Podcast, Darren and Duncan go through the steps of...
Feb 10, 2021•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 24
A hifi audio trade show is a tale of two realities. One side features attendees -- end users and consumers -- hustling from room to room, auditioning possible or future purchases, and mixing and mingling with audio hobby friends from around the world. The surroundings are posh, the sounds are (hopefully) lush, and the excitement is high. However, from the manufacturers and dealers' perspective, the other reality is an effort in pretending everything is fine. Setup at a trade show resembles a rea...
Feb 03, 2021•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 23
If you’ve ever heard an album or a specific group of albums in your library sound amazing on your system, hang on to that memory. Once you make a change to your setup, you may notice an entirely different set of sounds and records coming to the forefront of recording and playback quality in your listening room. Systems grow, they change, and they settle in. It’s entirely possible that not every piece of music will be played back perfectly at all times, and that’s okay. In this episode of The Hif...
Jan 27, 2021•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 22
You're moving to a new house, and the dreaded system setup is on the horizon. You bought a new piece of gear that's supposed to wipe the floor with what you've currently got, but right out of the box, the opposite seems to be the case. Moving speakers inch by inch for hours and feeling like you're getting nowhere is an unfortunate part of the hifi audio hobby, whether we like it or not. The complete sonic change of character of new gear as it settles in can neither be measured or easily explaine...
Jan 20, 2021•2 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 21
Have you ever stumbled upon a YouTube video showing off a piece of hifi gear, or perhaps an entire system? Knowing the limitations of such a lengthy and compromised signal chain as it relates to showcasing a fine-tuned stereo system, such a display can seem relatively useless for any meaningful understanding of what's going on. But is that completely true? The growing trend of showing off changes to a system or individual pieces of gear via video on YouTube is in part a response to a lack of hif...
Jan 13, 2021•1 hr 38 min•Season 1Ep. 20
In this week’s episode, listener questions abound, and Darren and Duncan settle in to answer all of them. One listener shares his room size and speaker placement needs, and the guys consider some options about a speaker type for his situation. Another listener with wireless KEF LS50s wants to add tubes to the mix, and it turns out there are a few options out there for doing just that. A listener wonders whether it’s just him or if the windows being near his system tends to collapse the sound sta...
Jan 06, 2021•2 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 19
It's about the system, and everything therein matters. You may have heard this before. When it comes to records, excellent vinyl playback hinges on the interactive choices made when assembling not only the record player system but also the library. Beyond that, the physical constraints of the vinyl itself requires music on the black discs to be mastered differently than for digital, and released with more natural dynamic range. Further, the type of music that lends itself to vinyl lovers' librar...
Dec 30, 2020•1 hr 52 min•Season 1Ep. 18
In this week’s episode of The Hifi Podcast, Darren and Duncan focus on a couple of great listener questions. After the usual “what’s up with us, audio-wise” reports, the guys dig into the topic of how to decide when an audio product is ripe for a modification. Given recent podcast focus on tweaks and mods, and their own re-build projects involving a pair of Audio Research D-115 tube amplifiers, it makes sense that there should be some guidelines to help identify which products can be modded, and...
Dec 23, 2020•1 hr 49 min•Season 1Ep. 17
Horn mouth diffraction, cardioid bass, high Q drivers, acoustic filters, constant directivity and line arrays. This is the world of loudspeakers from the perspective of someone who designs them, and in this week’s episode Darren and Duncan sit down with an expert who does exactly that, to chat about the devices which make the music we love so much. Speaker design engineer Chris Brunhaver brings a lifetime of experience and diverse influences to the discussion, and the guys flesh out this all-imp...
Dec 16, 2020•2 hr 25 min•Season 1Ep. 16
There’s something to be improved in almost any piece of off-the-shelf audio gear, because the decisions made to put the components on the store shelf in the first place include some compromises or choices based around availability of parts, not highest fidelity. Sure, a few hifi companies strive to build products purely for the highest sound quality, going out of their way to source the finest ingredients and eschewing PCBs for point to point wiring or spending an arm and a leg on cabinet design...
Dec 09, 2020•1 hr 57 min•Season 1Ep. 15
If you've ever felt the itch to crack open the crossovers of a pair of speakers and drop in some V-Caps on the tweeter, or replace the feet of an amplifier with blocks of wood, this podcast episode is for you. And if you've ever been curious what the heck is the matter with people who put beeswax in fuses or bitumin on chassis lids and who talk about quantum materials, maybe this will shed new light on the tinkerer's world in the audiophile game. Our amplifiers, DACs, turntables, cables and spea...
Dec 02, 2020•1 hr 53 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Desktops of the last 30 years have become dominated by the computer monitor. Gone are the days of a big desk full of a mess of papers, or the clean workspace with perhaps a small lamp on one side and a rotary telephone on the other. As the visual element of computing has taken more real estate, its seems that less and less has been offered to the sonic element. Tiny speakers the size of beer cans seem to dominate the landscape, and while computer audio and streaming fidelity have increased, the ...
Nov 25, 2020•1 hr 44 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Did your favorite hifi audio brand used to be for sale only at respected hifi dealers, but now they make bluetooth speakers you can find at Best Buy? Is the company that made the amp or speakers you love struggling to keep the doors open amid staggering overhead costs? What makes a brand ready for the "mainstream," and a viable candidate for purchase by a big conglomeration? Darren and Duncan ponder these questions and more as they tackle the sticky subject of mergers and acquisitions in the hig...
Nov 18, 2020•1 hr 31 min•Season 1Ep. 12
Excellent listener questions have been flowing in, and Darren and Duncan pick two good ones to discuss at length in this episode of The Hifi Podcast. Will asks what elements of different products the guys have seen when popping the hood of a device or poking around the inside of a speaker. Darren shares his feelings about Audio Research PC boards and layout, and Duncan brings up the inside of Vinnie Rossi equipment and some elements of his favorite speakers. The discussion wanders toward packagi...
Nov 11, 2020•2 hr 14 min•Season 1Ep. 11
"MMmmm, feels like it's a bit heavy around 6KHz... those cymbals are a little dark." If you've ever found yourself saying something like this, chances are you've spent some time developing you listening skills and abilities, which is one of the most important elements of being an audiophile. The idea of "Golden Ears" having to do with actual ears is wrong. Superior listening skills happen in between the ears, and are a product of focused efforts to get better at understanding and identifying wha...
Nov 04, 2020•1 hr 20 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Bill Johnson, the founder of Audio Research Corp. and a legend in our business, said that he wanted power supply components to be of such high quality that music could be enjoyed through each of the parts. We know that all audio equipment uses power — usually DC in variety — to amplify or produce the music we love, and his point is clear: clean power is as essential to the eventual excellence of a product as any of the other parts therein. We also know that the power supplied to our homes is AC,...
Oct 28, 2020•1 hr 40 min•Season 1Ep. 9
We’ve all been there. You sit a friend down in front of your system in the sweet spot, and try to blow their mind. Maybe they know a little about audio, and maybe they don’t. Maybe you’re trying to explain through music exactly why you’re so obsessed with wringing out the best musical playback you can from two speakers and a chain of expensive gear. Whatever the case, talking to non-hifi people about hifi can be more challenging than it seems. Our lexicon of descriptive words and labyrinth of te...
Oct 21, 2020•1 hr 24 min•Season 1Ep. 8
