5 High End Audio Lessons I Would Give My Younger Self
After nearly a decade in business, what began as a hobby and a DIY passion has turned into a long journey of learning, unlearning, and rediscovering fundamentals. With hindsight, there are many things I now understand far more deeply than when I first started. These are the five lessons I wish I had known earlier—lessons that no textbook truly teaches.
1. Audio Is Learned Through Practice, Not Theory
When you start out, a certain amount of ignorance is inevitable. Much of the knowledge in audio simply cannot be absorbed from books alone. Electronics textbooks cover the basics, and while those fundamentals are essential, they fall short when it comes to explaining everything we experience when reproducing music.
Audio shares common ground with electronics, but it is ultimately a separate discipline. There are countless variables, nuances, and interactions that have not yet been fully defined or conceptualized. If a theory cannot explain what we clearly hear, that does not mean the phenomenon does not exist. It simply means our understanding is incomplete.
In audio, the devil is always in the details—and those details are not written down anywhere. Active practice, experimentation, and long listening sessions are the only real teachers.
2. What We Hear Matters, Even If We Can’t Explain It
There are aspects of music reproduction that we can hear clearly but struggle to explain scientifically. These experiences are often shared across listeners, even when language fails us.
Take digital data transmission as an example. We are told that data is just data: ones are ones, zeros are zeros. In theory, if the same data is transmitted between the same devices, the sound should be identical. And yet, change only the conductor material inside a cable—keeping construction, geometry, and transmission mechanisms the same—and the sound can change dramatically.
The difference is often so obvious that no blind test is needed. Something changes, and we hear it immediately. If the data is truly identical, then something else must be at play—something we do not yet fully understand. Audio is not about what we already know; it is about what remains unknown.
3. Not All Amplification Is Created Equal
Early on, I was exposed almost exclusively to transistor amplification. It is efficient, compact, affordable, and highly practical. But it does not necessarily offer the most natural or expressive sound.
Later, I discovered vacuum tube amplification, and it was nothing short of a revelation. Tubes are fundamentally different devices. As long as their filaments are operating, conduction is continuous—electrons flow freely at all times. This creates a sound character that many listeners describe as more natural and emotionally engaging.
While vacuum tubes can be miniaturized to some extent, shrinking them comes at a cost: higher distortion and diminished sonic scale. Eventually, I realized that nearly everything I was trying to achieve with transistor amplifiers could also be done with tubes—and done better.
Single-ended, Class A tube amplification, executed with the best materials and carefully harmonized components, remains for me the highest expression of music reproduction. Not because it is cheaper or more efficient, but because it comes closest to realizing music’s full potential.
4. Power Comes at the Cost of Refinement
One of the most counterintuitive lessons in tube amplification is that quality is often inversely related to power. The most refined, nuanced, and delicate sounds tend to come from low-power tubes. As power increases, refinement often diminishes.
This relationship is evident across tube families—from very low-power tubes to higher-power ones like the 300B. The more powerful tubes tend to sound more forceful and crude, while their lower-power predecessors offer greater finesse and subtlety.
The key is balance. By pairing lower-power, more refined amplifiers with high-sensitivity speakers, a harmonic match emerges. When this balance is achieved, music sounds effortless, alive, and complete. In many systems, high power is simply unnecessary. Less power, when used wisely, can deliver far greater musical satisfaction.
5. Correction Destroys Musicality
Perhaps the most important lesson of all is this: corrective mechanisms are devastating to musicality.
Whether in the digital or analog domain, any form of correction—negative feedback, digital filtering, op-amps—introduces time-domain errors. While these processes may improve linearity or frequency response on paper, they do so at the expense of dynamics, timing, and emotional impact.
Every feedback loop introduces delay. And time is everything in music. When timing is compromised, the life of the music fades. Dynamics shrink, intermodulation distortion increases, and the sound becomes less convincing.
For listeners who are unsure what to avoid, the advice is simple: steer away from excessive digital processing, negative feedback, op-amps, and transistor-heavy designs. Whenever possible, experience purely analog formats like vinyl and tape—at least once in a lifetime.
Much of this knowledge has been lost over time. Many masters once understood these principles intuitively, but their insights were never fully passed down. The absence of this information in textbooks does not mean it is untrue—it means it was forgotten.
Closing Thoughts: Progress Isn’t Always Complexity
I started with vinyl and tape, moved into digital, and now find myself returning to analog again. Digital technology is impressive, accessible, and affordable, and when done well, it can sound excellent. But we should not forget that all sound originates in the analog domain. Our voices, acoustic instruments, and even synthesized sounds are born analog. Digital is, at its core, an approximation.
Complexity does not always mean improvement. Sometimes it means compromise.
Digital promises lower noise floors and theoretical advantages, but those benefits come with trade-offs. It is cheaper and more convenient—but whether it is truly better remains an open question. Only time will tell.
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