gdbk
29-04-2021, 00:54
I'm born in England, raised in tokyo for 2 years, and spent 30 years in the USA. I've moved to Japan about 10 years ago now.
I've been in the Hi-Fi industry both in a retail capacity and working with Japanese companies who are expanding outside of Japan.
All in, I have been working in the the audio industry since I was 16 years of age.
I built my first transistor amplifier from scratch at age 10. I build my own loudspeakers after having owned many name brand, high end speakers and left wanting in some shape or another.
I run two tube amplifiers, and 3 class-D amplifiers.
One of my tube amplifiers started off as a kit since I had zero knowledge of how tube amplifiers functioned let alone how the circuitry worked. It cost me $300 to start. It's now only got the original chassis and I've dumped about $3000 in modifications minus the tubes themselves.
My other tube amplifier is a kit amplifier by Ele-Kit but it is heavily modified. The main PCB's remain factory, but down to the resistors and screws are all aftermarket. I tuned my smaller and more expensive amplifier to really sound great with Pink Floyd as the basis of how I chose components.
The Elekit is a little more straight forward as far as modifications. It runs permanently in Pentode mode as KT66's are pentodes and to run the tubes as triodes or in UL made zero sense to me. The upgrades are primarily for longevity, and to achieve a tone that is not Japanese. Neither of my tube amplifiers have that signature "Luxman" style rolled off high-end or low-end. They sound fast, energetic and very musical.
The class-D's I have range from one that was just released to the ultimate 7498 following the chip manufacturers recommendations exactly. Today it sounds a little harsh but still very decent to listen to. I have a tiny desktop that has bt5.0 that I pretty much leave in my tool box in case every other amplifier fails. That one is a modified 3116 amplifier.
I use Nordost speaker cables for my main speakers, I have at last count 10 pairs of speakers including a pair of Japanese only ELAC's with the Heil tweeter that is in my closet. They sound good, but they aren't up to my standards. So I started building my own.
My RCA's use 1950's Western Electric, cotton wax shielding, and are solid core enamel coated wire, 3 wires with 2 grounds (not sure why but it sound a little better than just one positive and negative wire). They use either Switchcraft nickel plugs, or gold plugs depending on analogue source or digital.
I use an RME ADI2 DAC fs for preamp and parametric eq functionality. It is my favourite piece of equipment. I am personally not sold on MQA as it is lossy. We don't have Tidal here, and I am not interested in anyway with streaming. Streaming is in it's infancy. I will wait until streaming technology (the clocks) become better and more affordable. DSD is not to my liking because it is 20 bit. Why when we can have 192/32bit FLAC files? Plus the RME upconverts every digital signal anyway.
I'm not at all judgemental of what people chose to use as far as equipment. I've restored old Sony PC speakers from 1998 with all new caps, and resistors which took many weeks to complete. To me Audio is all about the enjoyment of listening to music.
I hate other forums that have what I consider trolls. One forum in particular concentrates solely on measurements which is in my opinion not how you can judge if something sound like music or not. A sine-wave is not a valid test. Plus most testing equipment itself is flawed and exhibits a peak that isn't really there. It's the power from the mains that the scope is picking up along with other electronics nearby. That forum is full of people who think that cables make no difference. I think most of us know better than that. Electrically they maybe very close, but sound wise, miles apart.
I enjoy discussing how we can improve our industry which is getting smaller thanks to the loudness wars and the convenience of Bluetooth. I want to be a part of reversing that trend. My heavily modified Rega turntable is never going to go away until I can no longer service it.
So I joined this forum to find like minded enthusiasts of listening to music, and trying to faithfully reproduce the material that is recorded.
I mainly listen to mid 70's onwards up until today as long as real instruments are used, the only exception is the recently retired Daft Punk. Perhaps I'm starting to show my "middle agedness". Pink Floyd is on constant rotation, along with The Eagles. Original Fleetwood Mac with Mic. Newish artist Diane Birch is great, only wish her albums were better recorded and mastered. A few of her singles are excellently produced and mixed/mastered.
I've been in the Hi-Fi industry both in a retail capacity and working with Japanese companies who are expanding outside of Japan.
All in, I have been working in the the audio industry since I was 16 years of age.
I built my first transistor amplifier from scratch at age 10. I build my own loudspeakers after having owned many name brand, high end speakers and left wanting in some shape or another.
I run two tube amplifiers, and 3 class-D amplifiers.
One of my tube amplifiers started off as a kit since I had zero knowledge of how tube amplifiers functioned let alone how the circuitry worked. It cost me $300 to start. It's now only got the original chassis and I've dumped about $3000 in modifications minus the tubes themselves.
My other tube amplifier is a kit amplifier by Ele-Kit but it is heavily modified. The main PCB's remain factory, but down to the resistors and screws are all aftermarket. I tuned my smaller and more expensive amplifier to really sound great with Pink Floyd as the basis of how I chose components.
The Elekit is a little more straight forward as far as modifications. It runs permanently in Pentode mode as KT66's are pentodes and to run the tubes as triodes or in UL made zero sense to me. The upgrades are primarily for longevity, and to achieve a tone that is not Japanese. Neither of my tube amplifiers have that signature "Luxman" style rolled off high-end or low-end. They sound fast, energetic and very musical.
The class-D's I have range from one that was just released to the ultimate 7498 following the chip manufacturers recommendations exactly. Today it sounds a little harsh but still very decent to listen to. I have a tiny desktop that has bt5.0 that I pretty much leave in my tool box in case every other amplifier fails. That one is a modified 3116 amplifier.
I use Nordost speaker cables for my main speakers, I have at last count 10 pairs of speakers including a pair of Japanese only ELAC's with the Heil tweeter that is in my closet. They sound good, but they aren't up to my standards. So I started building my own.
My RCA's use 1950's Western Electric, cotton wax shielding, and are solid core enamel coated wire, 3 wires with 2 grounds (not sure why but it sound a little better than just one positive and negative wire). They use either Switchcraft nickel plugs, or gold plugs depending on analogue source or digital.
I use an RME ADI2 DAC fs for preamp and parametric eq functionality. It is my favourite piece of equipment. I am personally not sold on MQA as it is lossy. We don't have Tidal here, and I am not interested in anyway with streaming. Streaming is in it's infancy. I will wait until streaming technology (the clocks) become better and more affordable. DSD is not to my liking because it is 20 bit. Why when we can have 192/32bit FLAC files? Plus the RME upconverts every digital signal anyway.
I'm not at all judgemental of what people chose to use as far as equipment. I've restored old Sony PC speakers from 1998 with all new caps, and resistors which took many weeks to complete. To me Audio is all about the enjoyment of listening to music.
I hate other forums that have what I consider trolls. One forum in particular concentrates solely on measurements which is in my opinion not how you can judge if something sound like music or not. A sine-wave is not a valid test. Plus most testing equipment itself is flawed and exhibits a peak that isn't really there. It's the power from the mains that the scope is picking up along with other electronics nearby. That forum is full of people who think that cables make no difference. I think most of us know better than that. Electrically they maybe very close, but sound wise, miles apart.
I enjoy discussing how we can improve our industry which is getting smaller thanks to the loudness wars and the convenience of Bluetooth. I want to be a part of reversing that trend. My heavily modified Rega turntable is never going to go away until I can no longer service it.
So I joined this forum to find like minded enthusiasts of listening to music, and trying to faithfully reproduce the material that is recorded.
I mainly listen to mid 70's onwards up until today as long as real instruments are used, the only exception is the recently retired Daft Punk. Perhaps I'm starting to show my "middle agedness". Pink Floyd is on constant rotation, along with The Eagles. Original Fleetwood Mac with Mic. Newish artist Diane Birch is great, only wish her albums were better recorded and mastered. A few of her singles are excellently produced and mixed/mastered.