New Linear Audio publication!

At some point you need to chose between doing your own design stuff, or edit the write-up of people about their design stuff. The balance was the wrong way :camoufl:

No other senior contributors are willing to take on the task of editor? It's a real shame that Linear Audio is coming to and end after only 14 issues. There is nothing else available to serve as a serious substitute, focused solely on audio design.
 
Member
Joined 2011
Paid Member
I only wrote a single article for Linear Audio but I can unequivocally say that Jan Didden is the best editor I've ever worked for*. He made the entire submission / revision / publication process flow smoothly and effortlessly. And, with a very light hand, Jan improved my manuscript in several places through wisely chosen edits. He is an invisible contributor on many, many of the articles in LA. If you have ever wondered why the articles in Linear Audio so good, I'll tell you why: Because they were edited by Jan Didden, that's why!

The audio homebuilder community owes Jan a huge debt of gratitude. And so do I. Thank you, Jan!

*including (especially including) Lewis Winner / ISSCC. It still sticks in my craw, years later, that I received the first ever "Lewis Winner Award" since I didn't get along with that crusty old goat, at all. FOAD, LW.
 
AX tech editor
Joined 2002
Paid Member
I only wrote a single article for Linear Audio but I can unequivocally say that Jan Didden is the best editor I've ever worked for*. He made the entire submission / revision / publication process flow smoothly and effortlessly. And, with a very light hand, Jan improved my manuscript in several places through wisely chosen edits. He is an invisible contributor on many, many of the articles in LA. If you have ever wondered why the articles in Linear Audio so good, I'll tell you why: Because they were edited by Jan Didden, that's why!

The audio homebuilder community owes Jan a huge debt of gratitude. And so do I. Thank you, Jan!

*including (especially including) Lewis Winner / ISSCC. It still sticks in my craw, years later, that I received the first ever "Lewis Winner Award" since I didn't get along with that crusty old goat, at all. FOAD, LW.

There's two ways to approach editing articles. Often it is done in such a way to make the article conform as much as possible to the 'house style' of the publication. This can go as far as specifying the numbering system you have to use in your article paragraphs. Needless to say that this strong styling also removes a lot of the personality of the author from the article.

My take always was to let the author personality shine through, because it is an integral part of the way he designs stuff, his choices, etc. One thing I learned from Ed Dell when I wrote for Audio Amateur: write your article as if you are explaining things to a friend. Personal, direct, not pompous.
So I limited my edits to make sure the intention of the author is clear and the flow was logical and consistent. But it is his article.

Jan
 
So I limited my edits to make sure the intention of the author is clear and the flow was logical and consistent. But it is his article.

Jan

Sometimes you had a bigger impact than you may realize; an e-mail you sent me some six and a half years ago is one of the things that led to my last Linear Audio article. In that mail, you asked me if I had anything to contribute to Linear Audio, preferably an article about a DAC. Around that time I actually designed the analogue/mixed-signal part of an audio DAC, but since it was work-related, I couldn't write anything about it.

My former colleague Hans Rosenberg used to make his own hobby DACs consisting of PCM63 DACs and FPGA boards that he used to make his own interpolation filters. It took some time, but finally your e-mail, Hans's enthousiasm about FPGA boards and my fascination for valve electronics led me to try to design and build a valve DAC including most of the digital signal processing - making absolutely sure not to use any intellectual property of my employer, of course.

Before I knew it, I spent three and a half years up to my throat in seventh-order equations and FORTRAN and Verilog code, and found myself measuring the start-up time of blinking orange lamps in a completely dark room, but it was fun to do and I learned a lot, so thank you for seven years of Linear Audio, but also thank you for suggesting the subject of my last article six and a half years ago!
 
Hi Jan,
It seems, to me at least, like yesterday that you started Linear Audio and it has been on my
mind to buy some issues here and there but I never did.
I want volume 6 now, and I'll probably get the any 6 package with the plan to buy the rest
not too long down the road. Since you numbered them 0 to 5, the first 6 package does not
get me vol 6, LOL!

Are you considering a package price for all the back issues which will save me from having
to place 2 or 3 orders?