Hello from Belgium

[Dinobe]

Hey all and many greetings from Belgium!

To introduce myself: I'm 23, M, student informatics at the Hogeschool Gent.

My interest in Hifi, audio started about 10 years ago, but was not until I was 16 when I got really serious into it.
I gradually built a 'decent system' from the money saved from holiday jobs

So after a few years and constant upgrades my system looks like this.
Rotel RA 972 integrated amp
Arcam alpha 7se cd player
B&W DM 601 speakers placed on Atacama stands.
NAD 402 tuner (display is broken, but reception is very good)
MIT Terminator 6 interconnect
Chord Co Carnival speaker cable.

Well as you can see not much DIY
But I made myself a stereorack, built some interconnects, a few power chords, marble slabs to put on top of the speakers and cdplayer.

Where did it all begin ?
When I was 12 I got a Philips portable radio with cd, played with a few years, but after that it broke. So I needed a replacement, but I did not have any money. I found 2 speaker cabinets along the street, took these home, installed a cheap woofer from nippon which I got for free from my uncle, 2 cheap peizo tweeters a simple crossover in it and that were my first real speakers.

I found a cd player from Sharp, the tray didn't open very well, but I had a cdplayer. I bought a Kenwood amp for about 15 euros from my cousin. This was my first real stereo

At that time I was also a DJ and together with a friend who had a second cdplayer and mixer we went from party to party with this stereo

After a while I added 2 15" subwoofers to my DJ 'booth'. They looked impressive but all they did was adding some rumble and boomy bass to it, but they made it sound a lot 'fuller'

I broke the Kenwood amp and was replaced with a Sanyo amp, which broke down a few months later. After the Sanyo amp, a Technics amp came in. This was really a very nice amp, and I didn't want to use it for my DJ life. I rented stuff from a company to play DJ.

The home made speakers started to rattle and I wanted a replacement. So I got some money together and I found a brochure from Technics in which they advertised a bookshelf speaker with 4 drivers and 2 passive radiators and blalblalbla....
It sounded very promesing so I went to a shop to give them a listen, it was the biggest dissapointement in my life..

I didn't know much about hifi in those days I but could clearly hear that they didn't sound good at all.

Disapointed I returned home and decided to have a look at a local dealer who sold all those unfamous brands (B&W, KEF, Marantz,..) I had never heard of those, so what could I expect?

The dealer showed my B&W 601's and wooow! I was really impressed, how was this possible? A simple 2 way, simple box sounded 100 times better than those Technics with 4 drivers and much blablabla

and after that I started reading, comparing, saving , buying to what
I have now.

So as you can see I started with DIY, went to manufactured stuff and now I'm on a DIY forum Hope I'm welcome

Why I didn't continue on the DIY path:
First of all no money
no equipement
no knowledge (well I had some, but all my stuff sounded horrible
so I conlcuded DIY = fun, but never that good as big brand stuff

A mistake??

Anyway that's my hif story in short...

Other hobbies
I play drums and guitar, I'm interested in everything what has to do with computers and webdesign, culture, music , festivals ,...

Well that was it in short

Greets
thx for reading

[SY]

Welcome to the forum! Grab a soldering iron, pull up a chair, and you'll see for yourself how excellent diy equipment can be.

[peranders]

Feel very welcome here and I'll hope you will get inspired. Maybe a Gainclone as project?

[Dinobe]

Well why I'm here:

my speakers B&W 601's are not really up to the level of the cdplayer and amp. I always liked the B&W CDM 1NT, but I simply can't bring up that amout of money. So I was thinking if DIY could help me out.

I'll start a new topic about that, if that's ok