And I thought I was unique, just like everyone else
Just found this thread so I’ll introduce myself. Born in India, came to the US in Y2K to get my masters in CS.
I am a software engineer at a rather large company. I lead a team that takes machine learning (AI) models and operationalizes them into something that actually works end to end at scale (very large scale). Sometimes it turns out to be useful for the users.
My wife thinks I am in the wrong industry and that I should have gone into the financial sector. She is probably right. I do spend quite a bit of time reading financial blogs and know how to make investments work for us. I want to retire early so I can do whatever I want whenever I want.
Traveling the world is the uktimate goal. I am at about 20 countries so far which feels far too less given my age but is a lot more than I imagined 10 years ago.
Photography was once a hobby but now I just take the best camera that is portable. No zoom, nothing fancy, just a sharp fast prime lens will do.
Hifi has been a passion for the longest time. I am not technical in this area though and am more of an enthusiast. Early on I sucked into a lot of snake oil by hanging out with a bunch of guys who are good people but a really bad influence with hifi. I bought and sold some really expensive stuff because I was never happy with any of it for more 6 months. As I started to learn a few basics about Dacs, amps, speakers etc. I started to get disgusted by this industry. I am used to data-driven development at work and we go to extreme lengths to measure and evaluate our features on a constant basis. If someone tells me they “feel” like it works correctly, one of us has to leave. Luckily that hasn’t happened with the team I am in. The world of hifi has a terrible signal to noise ratio. There are far too many manufacturers producing shiny things and paying off spineless reviewers. Everything sounds airy with a massive soundstage that is larger than any stage.. everything punches way above its weight class. I am supposed to take some random person’s word for it and shell out thousands of dollars? It’s amazing the extent to which cognitive dissonance drives this industry; most people can’t admit they bought crap and paid a crapload of money for it.
This website is exactly what I was looking for. I have a lot to learn.. my work schedule and intensity leaves me with very little mental bandwidth to learn new things outside of it, which is another reason to want to ramp down on the day job. I optimistically purchased a few books on audio, electronics etc. but they are gathering dust. However, I think I now understand just enough to make an educated decision based on graphs with explanations like Amir does..
I hope I can also contribute in some way.
If you read this far, you probably caught this last line while reading the post below.