My name is Louis. I am 19. My primary work is in recording and rehearsal of music: facilitating day to day work of a rehearsal space with a number of rooms, loons, and broke gear, and doing the recording. Primarily at one facility, although I move around when possible.
I started building computers 13 years ago. I started my affair with audio about six years ago, delving into the different codecs available for compression of audio and how they worked. When I was sixteen, got posterboy job at the first local retail store to hire someone under 18, saved every penny, and bought a pretty awesome hi-fi for good money. Some old receiver and Thiel CS3.6s... one with a blown tweeter, so I had a great deal. Cost $150 to have repaired and a few minutes of time to put it back in, and I had a $4.9K pair of speakers for under 1K!
I started the affair with electronics, gearing in specifically on audio about 8 years ago, building a "cmoy" pocket amp. then switching out parts and noting the different operation in how it powered small computer speakers, headphones, how it ran into distortion, how it ran off of four AAs instead of a 9V. What happens if I don't use capacitors? What happens if I change resistor values? What happens if I use a different op-amp? This was more fun than playing armored core.
Started voltmodding computer motherboards 3 years ago. Was a decent computer nerd. Two years ago quit dead end high school retail job to do temp work for some manhattan agency that lead to IT jobs when employers found out I had linux skills from my years messing with debian and gentoo, trying to make ftp and http servers and NAT routers with iptables out of 486s. Worked full time by 18 with no insurance or benefits, contracted 103 fever, took sick day, and was fired for not providing a doctor's note, which would have cost me given the lack of insurance! Gave me a rather bad taste of the field, considering I didn't really like making my hobby work, and considering that my pigeonholed knowledge made for poor job security.
Became technician at a large well known commercial studio nine months ago. Learned a huge amount while working at the larger facility, because I got to see what other people had done wrong. Their staff spent at least 30% of their time fixing mistakes from bad calls over 10+ years, so I always got to see the proper way, the wrong way, and the why for every situation. I feel this was a turning point, where I learned enough that I could actually find out what was wrong with something in a piece of pro gear, and fix it. Where someone else was going to abuse it for good money I had to do it right! Quit to continue college and work at a smaller studio I call "home", for a wage that allowed me to have spare time for schoolwork and a life. Between two jobs and school, especially with one job in music, I missed having a life! I missed sleep. Primarily I quit the one job so I could work on recording music vs maintenance on gear used for others to record music. Currently I'm getting all the basic courses out of the way so I can pursue a BSEE in electronics or electrical engineering(mainly the former).
I have huge gaps in knowledge from my age and inexperience, and other pools of knowledge some consider valuable from jumping into everything early on. My methodology to learn anything is to try it, fail miserably, and read up on/discuss with other people; each with their own personal biases. Determine from everything I see what way makes the most sense for the particular situation. and apply that to the experience from messing up what I did to the "textbook" info I learn from reading documentation and theory. this is a "shortcut" that allowed me to learn a lot before I graduated high school. This also explains how I can quickly find a fault in a cheap dual channel DBX and have absolutely no idea WTF is going on inside a basic powered speaker's internal amp.
I've been reading around this site a lot for the past week and a lot more tonight, and really like that there is a community where people with knowledge share it in a manner that makes sense to someone as uneducated as myself! The way I learn about things I am interested in is by diving into resources where I can access the information, discussion, and opinions of people much more knowledgeable. So I am sure I will spend a huge amount of time over the next few months reading every post I can find that interests me, doing searches for random words and seeing what comes up, seeing what opinions are consistently boasted by what people, as I take on new challenges in hopes of learning something. I hope to learn a lot from this forum! 🙂
I started building computers 13 years ago. I started my affair with audio about six years ago, delving into the different codecs available for compression of audio and how they worked. When I was sixteen, got posterboy job at the first local retail store to hire someone under 18, saved every penny, and bought a pretty awesome hi-fi for good money. Some old receiver and Thiel CS3.6s... one with a blown tweeter, so I had a great deal. Cost $150 to have repaired and a few minutes of time to put it back in, and I had a $4.9K pair of speakers for under 1K!
I started the affair with electronics, gearing in specifically on audio about 8 years ago, building a "cmoy" pocket amp. then switching out parts and noting the different operation in how it powered small computer speakers, headphones, how it ran into distortion, how it ran off of four AAs instead of a 9V. What happens if I don't use capacitors? What happens if I change resistor values? What happens if I use a different op-amp? This was more fun than playing armored core.
Started voltmodding computer motherboards 3 years ago. Was a decent computer nerd. Two years ago quit dead end high school retail job to do temp work for some manhattan agency that lead to IT jobs when employers found out I had linux skills from my years messing with debian and gentoo, trying to make ftp and http servers and NAT routers with iptables out of 486s. Worked full time by 18 with no insurance or benefits, contracted 103 fever, took sick day, and was fired for not providing a doctor's note, which would have cost me given the lack of insurance! Gave me a rather bad taste of the field, considering I didn't really like making my hobby work, and considering that my pigeonholed knowledge made for poor job security.
Became technician at a large well known commercial studio nine months ago. Learned a huge amount while working at the larger facility, because I got to see what other people had done wrong. Their staff spent at least 30% of their time fixing mistakes from bad calls over 10+ years, so I always got to see the proper way, the wrong way, and the why for every situation. I feel this was a turning point, where I learned enough that I could actually find out what was wrong with something in a piece of pro gear, and fix it. Where someone else was going to abuse it for good money I had to do it right! Quit to continue college and work at a smaller studio I call "home", for a wage that allowed me to have spare time for schoolwork and a life. Between two jobs and school, especially with one job in music, I missed having a life! I missed sleep. Primarily I quit the one job so I could work on recording music vs maintenance on gear used for others to record music. Currently I'm getting all the basic courses out of the way so I can pursue a BSEE in electronics or electrical engineering(mainly the former).
I have huge gaps in knowledge from my age and inexperience, and other pools of knowledge some consider valuable from jumping into everything early on. My methodology to learn anything is to try it, fail miserably, and read up on/discuss with other people; each with their own personal biases. Determine from everything I see what way makes the most sense for the particular situation. and apply that to the experience from messing up what I did to the "textbook" info I learn from reading documentation and theory. this is a "shortcut" that allowed me to learn a lot before I graduated high school. This also explains how I can quickly find a fault in a cheap dual channel DBX and have absolutely no idea WTF is going on inside a basic powered speaker's internal amp.
I've been reading around this site a lot for the past week and a lot more tonight, and really like that there is a community where people with knowledge share it in a manner that makes sense to someone as uneducated as myself! The way I learn about things I am interested in is by diving into resources where I can access the information, discussion, and opinions of people much more knowledgeable. So I am sure I will spend a huge amount of time over the next few months reading every post I can find that interests me, doing searches for random words and seeing what comes up, seeing what opinions are consistently boasted by what people, as I take on new challenges in hopes of learning something. I hope to learn a lot from this forum! 🙂
Hello Louis and welcome to the forums. Yes, this is a great place to learn from others as well as offer your experience. Go forth and multiply young man. 🙂
Hi Louis - Welcome to diyAudio! 😀
I have been going over the basics with JohnnyKool on this thread: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1545528#post1545528
(See post #4)
The 1st link has a good site that will help to fill-in some of those little knowledge gaps for you.
I have been going over the basics with JohnnyKool on this thread: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=1545528#post1545528
(See post #4)
The 1st link has a good site that will help to fill-in some of those little knowledge gaps for you.
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