Building it yourself -a perspective
I was in Best Buy about a year ago (yeah, I know - "Best Buy SUCKS!" and all that) with a client who saw a printer on sale in the Sunday paper, and wanted me to go with her to make sure it was a good deal, etc, etc. The sales guy kept trying to "steer" her (like a car salesman will) toward the ones that he obviously (to me) had been told to get sold...Long story short, every alternative he offered I was able to describe the flaws of to my client, and we got a better one than she was originally looking at, for the same price. The sales guy asked me how I knew so much about this tech stuff, and I said "I used to design computers...." and he jumped in and said "Yeah! I design computers, too! - I start with the motherboard, and then pick the best CPU, and power supply, and case, and video card....." Then I pointed out that I was talking about starting with a design concept and a blank piece of paper, coming up with a bus structure and cache memory protocol, writing a custom BIOS from scratch..."
And he just kind of paused and said "Oh..."
And yeah, back in high school me and a buddy cooked up our own solar cell just to see if we could do it. The Apple IIe had just come out. I was unimpressed, and remain so.
Then I went into Analog Design - digital just wasn't hard enough
I get bored, ya know? But I don't feel the need to start with "inventing the universe" - somebody's got to roast the coffee and malt...
I was in Best Buy about a year ago (yeah, I know - "Best Buy SUCKS!" and all that) with a client who saw a printer on sale in the Sunday paper, and wanted me to go with her to make sure it was a good deal, etc, etc. The sales guy kept trying to "steer" her (like a car salesman will) toward the ones that he obviously (to me) had been told to get sold...Long story short, every alternative he offered I was able to describe the flaws of to my client, and we got a better one than she was originally looking at, for the same price. The sales guy asked me how I knew so much about this tech stuff, and I said "I used to design computers...." and he jumped in and said "Yeah! I design computers, too! - I start with the motherboard, and then pick the best CPU, and power supply, and case, and video card....." Then I pointed out that I was talking about starting with a design concept and a blank piece of paper, coming up with a bus structure and cache memory protocol, writing a custom BIOS from scratch..."
And he just kind of paused and said "Oh..."
And yeah, back in high school me and a buddy cooked up our own solar cell just to see if we could do it. The Apple IIe had just come out. I was unimpressed, and remain so.
Then I went into Analog Design - digital just wasn't hard enough
I get bored, ya know? But I don't feel the need to start with "inventing the universe" - somebody's got to roast the coffee and malt...
Never mind - just grabbed them off of HiFiEngine. Soooo...what's it doing? "Gremlins"? - you know, if you feed them after midnight, or get them wet, they can be trouble....
One of the most satisfying things I have ever done in my life was to build the original Leach amp from Audio Magazine. I then built a higher power version and took it the local Pacific Audio Store and it whipped everything that they had on the shelf...and the salesman asked where did I get that amplifier. I said, off my bench at home. People do not build anything much anymore. Hand work is for the "other" masses.
I went to Ga Tech in 74-78 while Leach was an Associate Professor. Smart guy, but he would have been a lot smarter if he was as smart as he thought he was 
. Jim Bongiorno had just designed his Ampzilla, and Matti Otala was writing his seminal papers on Transient Intermodulation Distortion, and I personally found Leach insufferably arrogant, so much so that I shifted my emphasis to computer hardware design, just in time to go work for Data General during the whole “Soul of a New Machine” era there, and on to NexGen Microsystems, just before AMD bought us – so it all worked out for my stock portfolio 
(guess I should thank him then, huh…
) and I retired at the age of 36. Got bored after a year, and shifted to Audio and DSP based design and went to work for SRS Labs, and then on to QSound. During that time, Bongiorno and Otala had risen to where they should be
, and Leach…well, I think he may have gotten to a full professorship, while I was doing postgraduate-level research at Stanford and hang-gliding in Santa Cruz. I’m not saying it’s a bad amp, but there are a lot better build-it-yourself designs out there. Like the Wideband Current-Feedback Amp that Mark Alexander 
over at Analog Devices did 
. It kicks the Leach amp’s butt, hands down, in every category 
.
Just sayin’.
. Jim Bongiorno had just designed his Ampzilla, and Matti Otala was writing his seminal papers on Transient Intermodulation Distortion, and I personally found Leach insufferably arrogant, so much so that I shifted my emphasis to computer hardware design, just in time to go work for Data General during the whole “Soul of a New Machine” era there, and on to NexGen Microsystems, just before AMD bought us – so it all worked out for my stock portfolio (guess I should thank him then, huh…) and I retired at the age of 36. Got bored after a year, and shifted to Audio and DSP based design and went to work for SRS Labs, and then on to QSound. During that time, Bongiorno and Otala had risen to where they should be, and Leach…well, I think he may have gotten to a full professorship, while I was doing postgraduate-level research at Stanford and hang-gliding in Santa Cruz. I’m not saying it’s a bad amp, but there are a lot better build-it-yourself designs out there. Like the Wideband Current-Feedback Amp that Mark Alexander over at Analog Devices did . It kicks the Leach amp’s butt, hands down, in every category .Just sayin’.
It's like Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks' for nerds, or Krispy Kreme, in the old days, when you had to go there at 3AM to get them hot out of the oven.
I was in Best Buy about a year ago (yeah, I know - "Best Buy SUCKS!" and all that) with a client who saw a printer on sale in the Sunday paper, and wanted me to go with her to make sure it was a good deal, etc, etc. The sales guy kept trying to "steer" her (like a car salesman will) toward the ones that he obviously (to me) had been told to get sold...Long story short, every alternative he offered I was able to describe the flaws of to my client, and we got a better one than she was originally looking at, for the same price. The sales guy asked me how I knew so much about this tech stuff, and I said "I used to design computers...." and he jumped in and said "Yeah! I design computers, too! - I start with the motherboard, and then pick the best CPU, and power supply, and case, and video card....." Then I pointed out that I was talking about starting with a design concept and a blank piece of paper, coming up with a bus structure and cache memory protocol, writing a custom BIOS from scratch..."
And he just kind of paused and said "Oh..."
And yeah, back in high school me and a buddy cooked up our own solar cell just to see if we could do it. The Apple IIe had just come out. I was unimpressed, and remain so.
Then I went into Analog Design - digital just wasn't hard enough
I get bored, ya know? But I don't feel the need to start with "inventing the universe" - somebody's got to roast the coffee and malt...
So Leach has the big ego?
Yeah, I know. "Pot calling the kettle black, and all that.." - but is it ego to talk about true facts, rather than railing against other researchers' work, just so your captive audience (students) will use yours?
Like I said before, it's not a bad amp. And I bet it did feel good to do the dog-and-pony show at Pacific Audio.
My apologies if I stamped on your sandcastle in any way.
And BTW, Leadbelly - exactly what have YOU accomplished this lifetime? I've gotten reactions like yours my whole life. Google "compensatory behavior"
Otala's work was highly flawed in its conclusions especially cause and effect. I can't talk about the dead disrespectfully but Mr. Bongiorno was 6 sigma on social graces if you know what I mean.
Sorry, for additional help, you can start a thread at diypsychotherapy.com where I go by the alias "leadpoisoning"
Yeah, this thread is over-long now and growing. Perhaps
, like high-energy particle collisions 
, it should branch off and become new things, some of which will fade quickly....
Me - plenty. What instigated this recent outburst from such an accomplished person?
6 sigma - love it! Subtle....but sooo on-point. Yeah... but what creative person isn't? Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Belushi....and if you ever had the chance to share a pub table with Bob Widlar, or knew anybody who worked with him in his National Semiconductor days (Bob Pease, Jim Williams) ....all those groundbreaking designs AND entertainment. I tell people - "This has been a technical session - the floorshow is free. Hope you enjoyed it..."
As for "highly flawed in its conclusions"...not as much as Leach's. And his amp designs were FAR superior. Still considered milestones, some of them...
Yeah - anybody who wishes for a genius IQ should be careful what they wish for.
...a momentary lack of perspective. None of us are curing cancer here...
We are very fortunate to have work that inspires us, and a chance to make a living from it.
Some of us would like to argue that point. (Well, trying 😀) But yeah, the latter for sure.
Both personal friends for decades, I knew Jim at MIT at the beginning. There is nerdy eccentricity and out and out vile behavior and the line is not that fine. Jim and Bob were just into the analog design thing to the point of ignoring everything else at times.
I wouldn't dwell on the IQ thing, I've met more than one multi-millionaire VC who doesn't have a clue about anything. Faux pas, "What does that mean"?, a great sport make the rich guy look like a fool (gets boring fast).
Belushi locked himself into the booth and played LA hardcore at a disco and even got FEAR on SNL, big up for that. YouTube
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