What's in a name....
During my active career I worked in Air Defense, software development, enterprise resource planning and similar types of sports. I am a technical person and designing and building audio equipment is my way to focus my technical interests to produce well-sounding audio systems.
An audio amplifier or speaker or CD player should take the music signal at
its input and faithfully deliver it at the output. That output should be
identical to the input except for a change in level or power or impedance.
The device should be LINEAR. That’s my main goal when designing an audio
component. To verify that my designs are as linear as I can make them, and
to find out where I failed, I use a collection of test equipment. My pride
and joy is a 15+ years old Audio Precision System One + DSP, as it is
officially known.
I don’t want to be second-guessing the artist, the recording engineer or the
conductor. Tone controls are OK for correcting the speakers or the room
acoustics, not to ‘voice’ a particular piece of music or equipment.
That may sound pretty extreme, and the borderline is fuzzy. And to be
honest, I’m not so dogmatic really, and I do stray over that line once in a
while.
As an example, I haven't had the urge to design SE tube equipment. I know that SE amps can sound great and very enjoyable. From a design point of view, SE amps pose an interesting challenge. But for me it is too much ‘voicing’ the system rather than reproduce as faithfully as possible what’s being offered.
We haven’t reached that goal of faithfully reproducing what’s being
offered, not by a long shot. Yet, reproduced music can sound very
convincing, very enjoyable, very lifelike. That’s my goal.
It gives me great satisfaction to hear music coming from a
newly-designed piece of equipment for the first time. That box of parts,
mechanical construction, the board layout, the concept of the design,
that’s not just a piece of hardware. That’s ME!
