First Day, First Post

[chewrock]

Hello, I'm old, well, I feel OLD.

I started working in audio when I was 8. My father gave me a General Electric breadboard with a 2N107 transistor that had an hFE of about 10. I made a crystal radio with a one-transistor amplifier. Oh yeah.

Right now, I'm into minimalist stereo.

My primary sound sources are CD and vinyl.

I have an AR turntable, heavily modified by me. Van Den Hul cables, Camac connectors, lead weights on the substructure, extra springs to carry the weight, etc. Cartridge is an old Ortofons MC100 with nearly 1000 hours on it. I know, I need a new one.

My CD setup is just an ordinary Sony component video DVD player with the digital running through an RF cable into a Proceed D/A converter. It's old, but is still very revealing of the source material.

I have a passive box that I built myself. Internally wired with MIT phase aligned wires. The Penny & Giles precision sealed potentiometer / stereo fader control cost more than an entire Dolby surround system at Wal-Mart. It drives a Mark Levinson main amp that doesn't need any gain from the preamp, anyway.

The speakers are Visaton designed two-way. Home made by me direct from the plans with one change. The original design called for a metal dome tweeter. I used the true ribbon magnetostats that Visaton had available at the time, instead. They were a couple dollars more money, but worth every penny. Yes, the image coherence of the ribbons is amazing, and I don't need a center channel speaker in order to get a solid sound source when watching a movie.

The whole thing is wired with home made cables. Much of the raw material was purchased while I was stationed in Germany. I used WBT locking connectors, Van Den Hul or WBT double shielded silver interconnects, and whatever else made sense to me at the time. I think I have Eagle speaker cables with Monster connectors. Something like that.

I have two concepts that are mine own developments. Yep, sure do. One of them is the use of a make-up mirror to create a LEDE (Live end - Dead end) sound room. Works perfect and you don't have to spend a dime for someone with a computer to come out and map your listening room.

The other is a modification of an old design from the Lenkurt Demodulator combined with an inspiration I got from looking at the emitter offset bias that David Hafler used in the Dynaco Stereo 120 (I think that was a David Hafler design. My memory isn't what it used to be. And now you know how old I am, huh?) Yeah, a full complementary input stage with full cancellation of all input bias current noise, all input stage Base to Emitter junction / shot noise, and all input stage bias resistor noise. That's easy, you say. Op amp designers do that all the time with their balanced input stages. Uh, yeah, but not on an UNBALANCED line level input! The prototype was built to run my Stax SR-Lambda headphones. With the amp running wide open and the inputs OPEN, you can't hear a thing. People think the amplifier isn't turned on.

Anyway, I feel comfortable discussing just about anything that has to do with sound, from why the I2R=W rule means that you can't use an F connector as a speaker connector (it only will flow about 8 watts) to why a "Time and Direction" analyzer is an overpriced piece of audio nonsense that billiards shark with a 9 Ball trophy and a pocket mirror can replicate for you for free.

I won't be coming here very often, but when I do, it will be because I have something to say.

Thanks for reading,

chewrock

[lndm]

You seem to have some 'traditional wisdom'. I like that. I'll look forward to your posts.

[Cal Weldon]

Welcome to the forums chewrock.