Electronics and Audio

[strangersound]

How many of us are into electronics through interest in audio?

In the good old days, an audio engineer was worthy of the title. In the early days if you needed a piece of equipment, you designed and built it.

What is your primary interest in electronics and do you have another discipline that correlates with it?

[tpowell1830]

I grew up in the '60s and my interests were girls, music, cars and guitars, so I guess you could say that my interest in electronics started in audio. I had a friend who, with his father's help, designed a tube guitar amp, and that was my first inkling that maybe I, too, could get involved in electronics. Before this, it looked like rocket science to me after opening a small handheld transistor radio and looking at all the weird little things on a board that actually brought music to me.

It's funny, because in the '80s there was this huge thing that was called earbuds that let you privately listen to music, but these things were available in the early '60s and came with small transistor radios, albeit, they were not stereo, but hey, these were AM radios, so no stereo available.

My father, at the time, worked in a junk yard, which we called a wrecking yard. This is where wrecked cars went to be picked over by the yard owner for used parts that were popular and stripping them. Sometimes there were personal items left in the cars when they came in and my dad would get dibs on them. In weekends sometimes, i would go with him to the yard and goof off and look into these old wrecked vehicles for treasures or help my dad find a particular year make and model for a part that he needed. One day, he came home and had a transistor radio held up in his hand and since i was the first one of siblings that he saw, he gave it to me. It included the earpiece and I listened to music for hours as a 8 or 9 year old. Of course I opened it up and looked inside to see how it worked (but could not understand a thing about it)!

From then on I had to know how this stuff worked (and I wanted to build my own guitar amplifier).       


EDIT: Although you can't tell from the pics, but these radios were small, about twice the size of a pack of cigarettes.

[rdl]

Yes, audio definitely started my interest in electronics.

[bob225]

imho the 2 overlap, to understand audio you need some electronics information even some thing as basic as ohm's law, the further you go down the rabbit hole the more complex it becomes

radio was my entry into electronics in the mid 80's

[meretrix]

Oh definitely... I had always liked synth-pop music, and the interest in what synthesizers these musicians were using turned into an interest in the workings of those synthesizers themselves... and, as someone else mentioned, from there it was just down the rabbit hole. Somewhere in my parents' attic I think there's the first VCO I ever made, using a 555 and an integrator to get square and triangle wave forms 

[coppercone2]

process control interests

[Zero999]

I used to be more interested in audio, but then had to work on an intercom system and it got boring.

I have no interest in consumer audio equipment. There's too much bullshit and audiophoolery around, which puts me off. 

[schmitt trigger]

My first project that I built from scratch and that actually worked, was a vacuum tube audio amplifier.
Thus, I can safely say that I started into electronics because of audio.

[John B]

Musician, specialising in electric instruments and electronic music production.

Electronics knowledge is useful even as a technician because its rare that you will be doing something purely acoustic.

It's useful for me because I often build basic components that would otherwise require me to buy larger units that I don't need (and are expensive). Need a 10Meg input preamp that is small, driven by a battery, has a -3dB at <10Hz and can drive a 10K input on a desk? No prob.

There's also a lot of terminology and techniques in audio processing in the digital realm that are descendants of analogue devices. It's informative to have the full picture.

[bsfeechannel]

My first electronics project was to "electrify" dad's acoustic guitar. My first electronics kit was a stereo amp. At school, I was responsible for designing the sound effects for an arcade game that was part of a science project.

Many concepts you learn with audio electronics, like frequency, bandwidth, modulation, filtering, feedback, control, etc. are also very useful for RF, for instance.

[Alex Nikitin]

For me it was the other way around - electronics first, audio second. I've built my first oscilloscope before my first audio power amplifier  . Later audio became a large part of my life and I worked for many years in the audio equipment design and manufacturing field. Got my share of magazine awards (including Class A and C recommended in Stereophile) and hi-fi shows  . Now I work in industrial electronics and audio is again not more than a hobby (mostly tape recording stuff).

Cheers

Alex

[schmitt trigger]

Tape recorders! That brings some fond memories.

Perhaps you know: what was the main source of hiss in tapes?

Was it the large preamp gain? A characteristic of the recording medium? Something related to the bias frequency?

[Alex Nikitin]

Tape recorders! That brings some fond memories.

Perhaps you know: what was the main source of hiss in tapes?

Was it the large preamp gain? A characteristic of the recording medium? Something related to the bias frequency?

It is somewhat offtopic, but could be either of these three, depending on the way the compromise was made in a particular design. In a good tape recorder the tape itself is the main source of hiss and the difference between tapes could be quite big, up to 10-12 dBA or so for cassette tapes for example (or all 15-20 dBA if you take really poor quality tapes in consideration). I use a cassette deck in my home system which has about 60-70dBA dynamic range (depending on the tape used) without noise reduction, enough for the hiss to be all but imperceptible at normal listening levels.

Cheers

Alex

[RickBrant]

Indeed. When you're hearing tape hiss you're hearing the "grain" of the magnetic particles as they move pass the head. The smaller the magnetic particles used to make the tape, the less hiss. You can also reduce hiss by using faster tape speeds or by making the recording track wider.

[calexanian]

I believe its a gateway for most people because its ubiquitous and easy to understand and implement in rudimentary forms. Its the electronics equivalent of building a spice rack in wood shop.