Hi everyone, Davide here!
I am an analog integrated circuit designer at Analog Devices ( not in audio business though ), writing from Milan, Italy.
I wasn't really into high quality audio until about 1/1.5 year ago, when my girlfriend ( who had the standard average audiphile's mindset at the time ) was pushing me to buy a 2000€ DAC for her B&W bookshelfs + cambridge audio amp. Working in the field, i was sure that each € exceeding 200 was unjustified ( at least for our system), and to prove my point i started researching about unexpensive dac options. We ended up buying an Apple USBC to headphone jack converter, which was reviewed by amir. She had mixed feeling about that, since she recognized it sounded good but she was not believing it was possible for a 10€ adapter to be on par with """hifi""" gear she heard from her relatives. Long story short, i was able to convince her with endless hours of electronic "lessons", and since she was also not completely satisfied with the speakers and amp, we decided to go all in and build our speakers too. Now the situation is reversed, and it is my gf who has to stop me buying each new device i see reviewed here. In the end i think it would have been less expensive to buy her that DAC in the beginning XD
This journey gave us the opportunity to learn about music, science, woodworking and much more, and for me to improve my knowledge in the audio related electronics. We are very proud owners of a Khadas Board Tone 1( connected to a RPi which streams from logitech media server ), a AIYIMA AO07 ( which we modded into a very nice looking enclosure), and a couple of 3way speakers which we designed and build. Unfortunately we are kind of constrained in a small house atm ( cutting MDF on the kitchen table, god i still have dusty nightmares about that): we are moving to a bigger one soon, which i hope will give us the opportunity to improve the quality of our builds, i'm not short of ideas for sure!
You all taught us a lot, i will continue learning from your posts and i hope i will be able to maybe pay back something contributing to the forum
See you around,
Davide
I am an analog integrated circuit designer at Analog Devices ( not in audio business though ), writing from Milan, Italy.
I wasn't really into high quality audio until about 1/1.5 year ago, when my girlfriend ( who had the standard average audiphile's mindset at the time ) was pushing me to buy a 2000€ DAC for her B&W bookshelfs + cambridge audio amp. Working in the field, i was sure that each € exceeding 200 was unjustified ( at least for our system), and to prove my point i started researching about unexpensive dac options. We ended up buying an Apple USBC to headphone jack converter, which was reviewed by amir. She had mixed feeling about that, since she recognized it sounded good but she was not believing it was possible for a 10€ adapter to be on par with """hifi""" gear she heard from her relatives. Long story short, i was able to convince her with endless hours of electronic "lessons", and since she was also not completely satisfied with the speakers and amp, we decided to go all in and build our speakers too. Now the situation is reversed, and it is my gf who has to stop me buying each new device i see reviewed here. In the end i think it would have been less expensive to buy her that DAC in the beginning XD
This journey gave us the opportunity to learn about music, science, woodworking and much more, and for me to improve my knowledge in the audio related electronics. We are very proud owners of a Khadas Board Tone 1( connected to a RPi which streams from logitech media server ), a AIYIMA AO07 ( which we modded into a very nice looking enclosure), and a couple of 3way speakers which we designed and build. Unfortunately we are kind of constrained in a small house atm ( cutting MDF on the kitchen table, god i still have dusty nightmares about that): we are moving to a bigger one soon, which i hope will give us the opportunity to improve the quality of our builds, i'm not short of ideas for sure!
You all taught us a lot, i will continue learning from your posts and i hope i will be able to maybe pay back something contributing to the forum
See you around,
Davide