NOTIONS, SOUND AND UNSOUND


BACK IN THE SADDLE


McGowan now leads the company he founded in 1973, having left to pursue another opportunity in 1990, and then returning to PS Audio in 1997. (Photo courtesy of PS Audio)


He summed it up as that “38 or 40-until-you-die kind of demo- graphic.”


A DEPARTURE AND A RETURN Stan Warren, the S in PS Audio, left the company in the 1980s to form his own company to compete with PS Audio. He hasn't spoken to McGowan in years.


In 1990, McGowan left the company to join Arnie Nudell in founding Genesis Loudspeakers. PS Audio did OK for a time, but in 1997, it was clear that the company was foundering in a competitive market. McGowan bought the name back and decided to run it himself.


Never short of ideas, he had a just-maybe crazy idea for clean power—not in the sense of green, eco-friendly power, but in the sense of power that wouldn’t muddy sound. If a stereo playing great music at the highest quality is a recipe, clean power is one of


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the most important ingredients, and one of the ingredients that has to disappear in the delivery of sound to the listener.


Today, sound quality is McGowan’s singular focus. When he rescued his former company after buying back the name of PS Audio in 1997, he intended to keep it small. Just a mom-and-pop shop. Today, the company employs 53 people and, in addition to its electronic equipment and the Octave record label, PS Audio has a magazine called Copper, a new recording studio for Octave and, as is always the case with McGowan, wild and just-maybe- achievable dreams.


AN ARTIST Had he taken a path that was a little more straight and narrow, McGowan might have ended up in another, perhaps related, line of work. McGowan’s entrepreneurial drive came from his father. Te older man was a big influence on him as much for what he did as a family man as for what he didn’t or couldn’t do


Army AL&T Magazine


Summer 2021


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