The Hifi Podcast with Darren and Duncan

Harmonizers. Resonators. Grounding boxes filled with dirt. Green dots, quantum tunneling, past-time-disentanglement, beeswax, tellerium,  C37 lacquer, nano liquid... the list goes on and on. What some folks in the hobby consider heretical snake oil, others have tried and found some degree of success in their audio journeys. But where is the line? Perhaps the "madness line" is different for each pe...

It begins with a flip of a switch, and often on the first power-up of a new component. What's supposed to be one of the most fun parts of the experience descends quickly into horror when the dreaded HUMM comes through the speakers. Most of us have heard this horrible noise before, but it isn't always clear what the cause is, exactly. In this episode, engineer Darren takes us down to the ground as...

In this episode, the hosts look back on the last year of podcasts, as this week's marks a year of recording for Darren and Duncan. Listen on to find out why this isn't the 53rd episode, and hear about how the idea for this show came about. From inventing new circuits while hiking in the woods to red lights and ribbon mics in the back yard, it's been an exhilarating and rewarding journey.   This po...

Being the right distance away from your speakers, and in a position in the room that minimizes room influence is a large part of the effort of creating audiophile sound. This is mostly what you hear when the topic of the sweet spot comes up. But today, the guys focus on  the physical makeup of that area, and how it affects the sound. How comfortable are you? What's directly behind your ears? How h...

The audiophile hobby is a lot like cooking, and it behooves the chef to expose himself to as many sonic flavors as possible. But the audiophile hobby is also expensive, and like car collecting, the possibility of a wide range of exposure requires lots of time, money and probably a mix of both. This week on The Hifi Podcast, hosts Darren and Duncan pinch themselves about their years of access and e...

When it comes to selecting a room for an audio system, many factors come to play. And many constraints need to be managed in order to get something reasonable for music playback. At the same time, a listening room at a ranch in Texas will have little in common with one in an apartment in Hong Kong. In this episode, Darren and Duncan discuss the needs of both rooms, and talk about the ideal conditi...

In this episode of The Hifi Podcast, hosts Darren and Duncan talk about one simple trick that will help you know you're on the right path when it comes to speaker setup and system integration. Following their advice, when you throw frequency response analysis out the window, literally,  you're left to focus on elements of timing. And  if you do this, it might just get you thinking about what's imp...

In the used hifi market, shipping skills pay the bills. Which bills? Who knows. Heartache bills, perhaps. Seriously though, shipping knowledge specific to hifi (admittedly bizarre products that are fragile, heavy, delicate and absurdly weighted at the same time) can help prevent the abject tragedy of smashed hifi gear. In this episode of The Hifi Podcast, Darren and Duncan talk about the challenge...

Does a stereo system have to present floating, 3D images in order to be considered truly hifi? Does it need to be called "holographic" in order to be enjoyable? Does a bear poop in a toilet? Holographic sound may be one major thing both of The Hifi Podcast hosts chase, but it's not the only thing to love in a hifi system, by far. Regardless, many in the audiophile hobby are after this sort of fun,...

Taste is the reason we get into hifi audio, being the driver of our interest and also being held captive by our changing interests along the journey. The longer you spend in the audiophile hobby, or more specifically the more you improve a system and make it more revealing and resolving, the better the chance your tastes in music and perhaps sound character overall will evolve. This is all part of...

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 r...

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...

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...

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 h...

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 i...

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 audiophil...

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...

“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 wa...

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 c...

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...

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 pep...

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 fr...

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 e...

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 f...

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, th...