House de Kris
Member
Thought I'd take a bit to introduce myself. Been reading for a while here without posting much. But, I do hope to be able to contribute something at sometime. Found this site after a Topping D50 search and stayed for the tehno-talk. I'll give you the abridged Reader's Digest condensed version of my life - in as few a words as possible.
My dad got me started on music appreciation at a very young age. First classical, then Motown, then rock. In addition to music, I was also very fond of electronics in general. I used to marvel at wondering how they figured out how to put what component where and how to determine the value in order to get the circuit to do what they wanted it to do. These two interests (music and electronics) pretty much have defined my life since then. I bought project books and built the circuits and messed around with them. My high school electronics senior project was a simple oscillator with a short sequencer playing a loop. I also built most of my stereo at that time, but acknowledged that I probably couldn't coble together a cassette recorder from scratch, so that was my first store bought piece of gear. By the time I was 14 I had a bi-amp system with parts of that speaker system still the foundation of my main system today, some 40+ years later. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
College years saw an evolution of the same theme. The stereo continued to improve, and my senior project for my degree was what we call a sampler now with a fair sized sequencer controlling it. At that time, I had a tri-amped system with synthesized sub-bass and digital time delay channels in the rear (of the room). I also had a measurement mic permanently hanging from a couple wires from the ceiling directly over my head in the listening position, in case I needed to check something at a moment's notice. This was the 70s and schools were scrambling to address the needs of industry by offering a bunch of new courses on digital theory and design. I liked the analog design courses better, although I knew digital was the future.
Upon graduation I landed a job at a semiconductor automatic test equipment (ATE) manufacturer. Manufacturers of chips need to know what parts don't work and what parts work (and how well they work). So they buy ATE to sort this stuff out. I worked on their digital testers for a year then jumped at the opportunity to join a new division building analog testers. Around this time, the VCR was the most complex electronic device found in homes. I was on a project to make a digitally based tester for chips that go into VCRs (at that time, all other solutions were analog based). Got canceled before we sold any. I then moved to converter testing. One board to test DACs and add another to it to test ADCs. Around this time there were rumors of this new consumer product coming out called the CD player with the expectation that lots more DACs were going to be sold, thus the greater need for testing. I remember Burr-Brown coming for a dog and pony show of our DAC testing solutions. I gave my typical schpeal on how we can find linearity errors faster than anyone else. Then they asked a simple question, and I basically said, "well, jeepers, no one has asked for that measurement before." This was a critical spec for them, and illustrated how the users of DACs had moved into a new phase of development. Our limitations were based on the technology of the day, and could be done but would be prohibitively expensive.
Companies move around, as do people, and I moved around to other ATE manufacturers gaining experience making standard instruments and custom solutions as well. Some aspects could be related to my audio interests and hobbies (like op-amp testers), others not so much (like testers for seatbelt controllers). A little over a decade after my initial experience with converter testing, I returned to that arena with a much more advanced tester to build a new test solution on. The kind of results were more akin to what you see on ASR in this day and age. The last decade of my career was spent on making testers for flash memory.
The home stereo continued to evolve and expand. Evolve because it was still based on the speakers I built in high school. A number of drivers had been put into the cabinet over the years, but basically the same. I was using RtR ESR-6 tweeters since I started college, but those got replaced by some custom built electrostatic panels from X-Static in Emmoryville, CA. The mid-range conical horns I built in the 70s had been extensively modified and turned out to be more of a directivity controller than a straight horn. The folded horn for the woofer had sand panels added for cabinet rigidity. The subwoofer was physically coupled to the listening seat to provide strong tactile sensations. The synthesized bass channels got a 12 foot tube subwoofer based on the Wave Cannon. The electronics grew to a tetra-amplified front channels with bi-amplified rear channels, in addition to the synthesis channel. I squeezed four subwoofers into my small 16x12 living room.
In 1997, for whatever reason, I stopped into a musical instrument store. I purchased, pretty much on impulse, one of the new crop of instruments called a groovebox. This marked a major direction change for me. I pretty much stopped buying CDs from that point on, as I could now make my own music to satisfy my musical needs. Since that time, I may have bought a dozen or so discs, not too many at all. Of course, this opened the door to a whole new world of equipment purchases, buying synths now instead of stereo gear. Then in 1998 I discovered Burning Man which turned me onto the beauty of outdoor listening. Yet another area of interest to pretty much shut off any desire to spend more money on home stereo. I built a number of nice outdoor systems and fully enjoyed those challenges. Later, in 2010, I sold my cramped home in California and moved to a ranch in Texas specifically chosen for its nice potential outdoor listening pasture.
Well, there you go. A brief introduction of myself and how I got here. I guess I could have added some pictures. Perhaps I'll add some in the future if there seems to be a need. And yeah, I'm still measuring stuff.
My dad got me started on music appreciation at a very young age. First classical, then Motown, then rock. In addition to music, I was also very fond of electronics in general. I used to marvel at wondering how they figured out how to put what component where and how to determine the value in order to get the circuit to do what they wanted it to do. These two interests (music and electronics) pretty much have defined my life since then. I bought project books and built the circuits and messed around with them. My high school electronics senior project was a simple oscillator with a short sequencer playing a loop. I also built most of my stereo at that time, but acknowledged that I probably couldn't coble together a cassette recorder from scratch, so that was my first store bought piece of gear. By the time I was 14 I had a bi-amp system with parts of that speaker system still the foundation of my main system today, some 40+ years later. Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
College years saw an evolution of the same theme. The stereo continued to improve, and my senior project for my degree was what we call a sampler now with a fair sized sequencer controlling it. At that time, I had a tri-amped system with synthesized sub-bass and digital time delay channels in the rear (of the room). I also had a measurement mic permanently hanging from a couple wires from the ceiling directly over my head in the listening position, in case I needed to check something at a moment's notice. This was the 70s and schools were scrambling to address the needs of industry by offering a bunch of new courses on digital theory and design. I liked the analog design courses better, although I knew digital was the future.
Upon graduation I landed a job at a semiconductor automatic test equipment (ATE) manufacturer. Manufacturers of chips need to know what parts don't work and what parts work (and how well they work). So they buy ATE to sort this stuff out. I worked on their digital testers for a year then jumped at the opportunity to join a new division building analog testers. Around this time, the VCR was the most complex electronic device found in homes. I was on a project to make a digitally based tester for chips that go into VCRs (at that time, all other solutions were analog based). Got canceled before we sold any. I then moved to converter testing. One board to test DACs and add another to it to test ADCs. Around this time there were rumors of this new consumer product coming out called the CD player with the expectation that lots more DACs were going to be sold, thus the greater need for testing. I remember Burr-Brown coming for a dog and pony show of our DAC testing solutions. I gave my typical schpeal on how we can find linearity errors faster than anyone else. Then they asked a simple question, and I basically said, "well, jeepers, no one has asked for that measurement before." This was a critical spec for them, and illustrated how the users of DACs had moved into a new phase of development. Our limitations were based on the technology of the day, and could be done but would be prohibitively expensive.
Companies move around, as do people, and I moved around to other ATE manufacturers gaining experience making standard instruments and custom solutions as well. Some aspects could be related to my audio interests and hobbies (like op-amp testers), others not so much (like testers for seatbelt controllers). A little over a decade after my initial experience with converter testing, I returned to that arena with a much more advanced tester to build a new test solution on. The kind of results were more akin to what you see on ASR in this day and age. The last decade of my career was spent on making testers for flash memory.
The home stereo continued to evolve and expand. Evolve because it was still based on the speakers I built in high school. A number of drivers had been put into the cabinet over the years, but basically the same. I was using RtR ESR-6 tweeters since I started college, but those got replaced by some custom built electrostatic panels from X-Static in Emmoryville, CA. The mid-range conical horns I built in the 70s had been extensively modified and turned out to be more of a directivity controller than a straight horn. The folded horn for the woofer had sand panels added for cabinet rigidity. The subwoofer was physically coupled to the listening seat to provide strong tactile sensations. The synthesized bass channels got a 12 foot tube subwoofer based on the Wave Cannon. The electronics grew to a tetra-amplified front channels with bi-amplified rear channels, in addition to the synthesis channel. I squeezed four subwoofers into my small 16x12 living room.
In 1997, for whatever reason, I stopped into a musical instrument store. I purchased, pretty much on impulse, one of the new crop of instruments called a groovebox. This marked a major direction change for me. I pretty much stopped buying CDs from that point on, as I could now make my own music to satisfy my musical needs. Since that time, I may have bought a dozen or so discs, not too many at all. Of course, this opened the door to a whole new world of equipment purchases, buying synths now instead of stereo gear. Then in 1998 I discovered Burning Man which turned me onto the beauty of outdoor listening. Yet another area of interest to pretty much shut off any desire to spend more money on home stereo. I built a number of nice outdoor systems and fully enjoyed those challenges. Later, in 2010, I sold my cramped home in California and moved to a ranch in Texas specifically chosen for its nice potential outdoor listening pasture.
Well, there you go. A brief introduction of myself and how I got here. I guess I could have added some pictures. Perhaps I'll add some in the future if there seems to be a need. And yeah, I'm still measuring stuff.
