
NwAvGuy: The Audio Genius Who Vanished - StandardFuture
http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/nwavguy-the-audio-genius-who-vanished
======
steve19
I followed this guy for a long time until it was obvious that he quit and did
not mean to return.

The design of that amp was frustrating. The power, the input and the output
are all on the front of the amp. I always wondered why nobody cleaned that up
and put power and input at the back. I also wished it used DC rather than 12
VAC.

Now I know, it was the no-derivative license.

When I was young I would mess around with audio circuits, trying different
opamps, seeing if they changed the sound. These days I am far more concerned
about connectivity.

His Objective DAC is more interesting in my opinion. If I ever need a 24bit
USB DAC, I will get one. Considering I think 256 bit MP3s sound just fine, and
FLAC far to much effort, I probably will never need one.

[http://www.jdslabs.com/products/48/o2-odac-
combo/](http://www.jdslabs.com/products/48/o2-odac-combo/)

NwAvGuy proved what he wanted to do, that simple circuits are good enough and
doing things like hand matching resistors with very expensive equipment is not
required for a clean reproduction of audio. I still wonder if he really cared,
or if he was a troll (he spend a good amount of time getting himself banned on
forums).

~~~
runeks
> His Objective DAC is more interesting in my opinion. If I ever need a 24bit
> USB DAC, I will get one.

FWIW I purchased his Objective DAC (from this site:
[http://www.headnhifi.com/odac-rca](http://www.headnhifi.com/odac-rca)) and I
don't hear less noise from this than my internal sound card (Terratec Aureon
7.1-Space).

So I was a bit disappointed. But perhaps my internal sound card was just that
good, although I think the noise level is greater than is reported online.
Audible noise at normal listening levels.

~~~
ggreer
I have an ODAC and I can't detect any noise unless I max-out the volume knob
with my ER-6is. Not that it matters, since playing anything at that volume
with those headphones would be deafening and painful. I definitely hear more
noise with my FiiO E7, and my laptop's headphone-out is even worse.

In the hope that I have some idea of what I'm talking about, I've listed some
possible reasons why you may be hearing noise and how to fix them.

1\. Using analog inputs (RCA or line in) instead of USB. This will just
amplify the noise from your input source. Analog inputs are enabled even if
you're playing sound through USB, so be sure to disconnect any secondary
source from your amp.

2\. Nearby EMI. I found I could hear a high-pitched whining if I put my
amplifier near the lower-right of my monitor. Repositioning your amplifier
and/or headphone cable may fix the problem.

3\. Grounding issue (unlikely). Try unplugging the amp's adapter and using the
DAC-line output[1]. If there's no noise, the problem must be in amplification.
That means either a defective amplifier circuit or a grounding/EMI issue.

4\. Bad software (very unlikely). I once had a copy of VLC that output low-
level noise when paused. This was when x86-64 was new. There were plenty of
other problems with VLC on 64-bit at the time, since it used ints and longs as
bitfields. You'd have this problem with all soundcards, not just the ODAC.

It might also be useful to describe your set-up in more detail, including what
headphones you've tried your amp with.

Edit: Another thing you'll want to do to improve audio output: Make sure your
OS is sending 24-bit audio to the ODAC. On OS X, open up Audio Midi Setup,
then select the ODAC output and switch it to 24 bit. The default is 16-bit,
which reduces dynamic range if you don't have the software volume at 100%.

1\. It's the right-most output on mine:
[http://abughrai.be/pics/IMG_0594.JPG](http://abughrai.be/pics/IMG_0594.JPG).
I'm not sure where the DAC-out is on other versions.

------
doe88
Beware of Newsweek if this story becomes too popular they'll start a thorough
and extensive work of research and finally claim _NwAvGuy_ is no other than
Dorian S. Nakamoto.

~~~
nawitus
"I'm no longer involved with DOCs, I've handed it over. Now where's my free
lunch?"

~~~
tripzilch
> where's my free lunch?

Noise-shaped dithering.

(seriously the closest thing to free lunch I've seen in information/signal
theory. or computer science. I think it's pretty magical)

------
kbar13
This actually reminds me of ripster55[0], who is (in my mind) the leading
expert of mechanical keyboards online, and is banned from many of the popular
mechanical keyboard forums.

[0]
[http://www.reddit.com/user/ripster55](http://www.reddit.com/user/ripster55)

~~~
lytfyre
It's seemingly not an uncommon pattern in electronics related hobbies, you'll
have a few main forums with their own orthodoxy, and a banned former member
who disagrees, and clearly has at least a good idea what they're talking
about.

For instance, rc multirotors has "timecop", who was banned from rcgroups. He
designed a flight controller which is popular and well thought of. AIUI, he
also did the hardware design for what are probably the most recommended
enthusiast motor controllers today.

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fr0sty
Wouldn't an easy way to find this guy be to publish an altered version of his
designs and see if you get a CnD letter?

~~~
starky
There are already companies out there producing modified versions of his
designs which technically break the license. See the version from Head n Hifi
[http://www.headnhifi.com/O2-ODAC-fully-
modded](http://www.headnhifi.com/O2-ODAC-fully-modded)

I think if we were going to see him surface again he already would have.

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mynameishere
Always wondered about audiophiles. Seems like a simple truism: The best
quality reproduction of a recording will come from whatever the final mix
engineer was using. If he was using a 400 dollar pair of Sennheisers and
similar equipment, I'm not sure how you could possibly do better. _Maybe_ you
could do better if you had the masters and could remix it with more expensive
crap, but that's unrealistic. And if the engineer really screwed up, no pricey
amp is going to fix it.

~~~
gregsq
Not exactly. Sound production and sound reproduction are separate pursuits.

Sound reproduction should ideally be input transformed with transducers to a
listening environment. In the absence of perfect transducers there's a lot of
play area for enthusiasts to modify the transformation stage to interplay with
what is by far the weakest part of the chain, the transducers. Massy complex
mechanical circuits with all the imperfections that entails. Despite this,
it's very possible to improve the state of the art.

Sound production on the other hand is whatever the producer wants it to be.
And the best transducers are often purposefully avoided for monitoring,
because it won't necessarily sound too good on the radio when driving to work,
or an MP3 through Dr Beats on a noisy tube or metro.

------
joshontheweb
I'd love to see a blind test of Pono. The kick starter campaign is totally
driven by celebrity testimonials. Hard to reall tell if it's better.

~~~
hnha
including RHCP members where Californication is famous for being terribly
mastered. Such a disgusting snakeoil campaign...

~~~
badsock
I think we agree on the 24/192 thing being foolish, but the one significantly
positive aspect of Pono is that it would allow access to remastered recordings
without the loudness-wars style compression (Californication being a great
example). My hope is that it will be a market that you can safely sell high-
dynamic-range audio to because presumably they value that over preceived
volume.

~~~
zastavka
Eh, I'm not holding my breath on that (though of course I hope I'm wrong). In
all the Pono marketing material I've read I've seen almost no reference to
(re)mastering; it's all been about chasing the hi-res dragon. Meh.

~~~
badsock
You know, you're right - I'm extrapolating too much from the "released in
whatever format the masters are in" claim.

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jrockway
If he's gone, the solution sounds like to ignore his license.

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mrmondo
I was speaking to him within a day of when he was last heard from. I got the
feeling he was getting sick of the 'fame', I know he was getting a lot of
flack from products he measured / reviewed from creators of high-priced, low
quality manufacturers.

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busterarm
I'm not sure this is really that remarkable, he just had a personality and got
some attention.

There have been high-quality amplifiers around for a long time now and Class T
([http://www.google.com/patents/US5777512](http://www.google.com/patents/US5777512))
amplifiers at that pricepoint are over a decade old. They're very popular with
DIY audio guys. I've had my Trends TA-10 close to 10 years old now.

He did something cool, but I don't see it as all that remarkable.

~~~
analog31
I'm a pretty intensive electronics enthusiast. I checked out his site, and
skimmed some of the materials.

My impression is that he deliberately designed a fairly mundane circuit using
commonplace parts, to show that an esoteric design is unnecessary. So it's a
"political" design, if you will.

The impressive thing is that his documentation of design decisions and
techniques is pretty exhaustive. I've definitely bookmarked it for a closer
read.

------
Kiro
For me NwAvGuy is most famous for his Headphone & Amp Impedance article where
he coined the 1/8th rule so many audiophiles refer to all the time.

[http://nwavguy.blogspot.se/2011/02/headphone-amp-
impedance.h...](http://nwavguy.blogspot.se/2011/02/headphone-amp-
impedance.html)

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syassami
He's the satoshi of the audio world

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anigbrowl
Off topic, but I found this layout painful to use, with something like 60% of
the window devoted to links for other articles and the actual content squeezed
into a column on the left. Why would anyone intentionally make things so hard
to read?!

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loup-vaillant
No derivative works… Hmm…

Couldn't we just "reverse engineer" the thing, and rebuild a design "from
scratch"? I mean, his work should allow us to go back to first principles,
from which we can rebuild a new design.

~~~
lutusp
That's always a possibility, but I think most people who build his designs
don't know how they work. High-quality audio reproduction isn't mysterious,
but it's not trivial either. One must have a good sense of how and why
amplifiers distort signals. That limits the possible candidates for a new
design and assures that many will simply build a proven design they don't
understand.

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Zenst
Well his internet domain was renewed so he ain't dead, just afk still.

~~~
codezero
Could be that his provider auto renewed and his card happened to still work.
But more likely he's alive :)

