My heart goes out to his family and yes Paul was a genius and wonderful man. His designs completely changed my audio world. I can no longer settle for good or different as his gear and sound was on an entirely different plane of performance.
He never accepted the status quo or conventional wisdom and broke the rules we see written in many electronics books. He was a real pioneer with the heart of a pioneer.
He was so generous with his time with me. He spent countless hours teaching and coaching me on how to build electronics, and all over the phone!
He was also a man who trusted God with his whole heart. Despite his physical ailments, Paul always received his strength and hope from his Lord and Savior.
Paul will be greatly missed by many and for a host of beautiful reasons.
I am very saddened that Paul has passed. He was very helpful to me when I needed it. Paul was a great audio designer that built me the best preamp I have ever owned and still use daily....the Dude preamp. Paul was more then happy to talk audio with me but the time I brought up my other passion, ice fishing in northern Mn, well, it's all he wanted to talk about. I appreciated that he had such interest in my other endeavors. He won't be there to call on now but I will always remember our talks together. R.I.P. Paul, you will be missed !
This is indeed sad news. Paul was very generous with his knowledge and opinions about audio. My condolences go out to his brother Brian and the rest of their family.
Very sad indeed at this news. I've known Paul via the phone for several years. I always looked forward to our conversations. We spoke about my Dude, audio in general, the care of our parents, fishing, and the latest news, sometimes for hours.
I believe if Paul had ever tried to go mainstream with his products like the Dude, Samsons, and his incredible tube amps he would be assured a place in the first tier of audio designers.
As it is, he's on my A list as an audiophile, inventor, and most of all friend.
He was an audio brother to me and cared little about $. He was a brilliant designer (I owned a Dude, Samsons, and ST100) but a horrible businessman. What a rare jewel and what a loss. My condolences Brian (and family).
I was going to start a thread myself about Paul. He was one of my dear friends and like a brother to me. Not to mention the builder of the most amazing audio gear ever built. He will be missed every day. RIP brother.
Paul was a lot of things. A brilliant designer An 'old school' handcrafting artisan A patient listener And a generous, good- natured soul His products are as described: " In a league of their own" and as such have taken me out of the amp/ pre-amp merry go round. But most of all his friendship was the key ingredient. I will miss him dearly
I found this thread much later. I am still not over this. My heart still hurts. I did not listen to my system for a long time. But I am listening now. Every time I hear Paul through music.
Here's a quote from TRL home page with which I couldn't agree more.
"Tube Research Labs typically does not publish traditional measurements on it's equipment's performance. These measurements illustrate how machines hear, not how humans hear. We probably are years away from having measurements which we can really associate to or correlate with the listenability of a device."
It's seems silly to me to discard all measurements just because sometimes measurements don't correlate with what we hear, or expect to hear. Certainly, measurements do often explain what we hear.
Just awful to read this terrible news. So sad to hear of this. Paul was a friend and a great audio mind.
I am happy to hear of Paul's being saved, and a brother in Christ.
My deepest condolences to Paul's family, especially his brother Brian. My heart also goes out to Paul's other dear friends in the audio world, some of whom I know in this thread. May we all reflect on this moment and give thanks for the days in which God blesses us on this earth.
It is shocking indeed. Thanks to Paul Stein for letting me know at Capital Audio Fest. My heart is sad.
My first serious audiophile system was anchored around TRL/CRL - source, amp, wires and speaker. I have a speaker hand built by him. It took him 18 months to do it and the results are stunning. No, it is not about frequency response or resolution but sounding "right".
We often talked about "life" or spirituality and shared common values. I learnt a lot about his secret "lower the noise floor" - but not in the way we measure things - THD, but the way we listen to music. Our ears are better judge.
We did a gig together - TRL 600 amps based on NCore 1200 modules and after many tweaks - he said, "it sound ok" ... he was years ahead of most people in the audio industry ... yes a lot of people have implemented and love those amps ... just because they have not heard the TRL Samsons.
i just loved the guy. had him to the house multiple times; along with Brian. Now, i own a set of the amps and one of them does not work...and i can't find anyone capable of fixing them . does anyone know of an operating manual for them? or someone that can fix them? I am desperate.
No operating manual is available in terms of a schematic etc... A good tube tech should be able to fix most issues pretty easily. Paul’s design is rather straight forward for the most part. It is also very robust so I think the required fix should be straight forward like replacing a resistor and such. The only possible area of difficulty would be if the issue is in the tube voltage regulation portion of the power supply. His design is tricky to dial in and set up initially. This is not a straight forward portion of the amp and one that can be very tricky.
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