There are a lot of ways to define pleasant. Like I said previously, I aim for realism and euphony. That is the ultimate design in my opinion.
I've only been able to accomplish this goal once, it's difficult to have the two at the same time.
In essence, if the sound is real enough to confuse your brain into thinking it is real, that is check one.
If it also makes you feel like you are having an orgasm in your brain, it is check two.
Realism can be achieved with a well enough designed system.
Euphonics are a mystery that can only be achieved through trial and error.
Euphonics are a must though, no matter how real it sounds if it doesn't keep you listening then what's the point.
The sound of my latest dac stage put tears in my eyes. I didn't even know that was possible. The sound is not euphonic per se which isn't surprising considering that its self produced distortion should be theoretically next to zero, but it is the smoothest most subtle sounding thing I've ever heard, the pure opposite of fatiguing.

 

... I have no interest in marketing.

In that case you have precisely zero chance of success. Stop now and save your time for something else.

 

ok....so does everyone need a custom built amp?

 

In that case you have precisely zero chance of success. Stop now and save your time for something else.

I don't need to be actively spreading BS in order to attend trade shows and talk to the right people. Word spreads fast on head-fi.

ok....so does everyone need a custom built amp?

Not sure what you mean. My amps won't be "custom" any more than the amps you buy in a shop will be. If by custom you mean DIY then yeah DIY usually nets you the best results in most things because you aren't limited by business related restrictions and you don't have to be a lazy and/or uncreative designer like most commercial ones appear to be.

 

hi coinmaster,
My advice to you is not to go into partnership with another engineer, keep your proposed company under your complete control.
If you need technical expertise, hire someone.
They do not have to be full time employees, there are many retired engineers who would enjoy part time contract work.
Also there are retired Sales/Marketing people who have business contacts that could be beneficial.

Early on I did go into business with other engineers, total disaster, every engineer has 'his way' of how the product should be designed.!

Finally I set up and ran my own very successful, small international electronics design/development/manufacturing company for over 20 years.
I hired/fired staff as the business required.

Eric
BTW: Patents cost money to set up and lots of money to defend in court.

 

Also as I said before under certain circumstances I was unable to tell the difference between practically 0% distortion and nearly 1% distortion(mainly comprised of 2nd, 3rd harmonic). I actually thought they were the same until I measured it.

That may be down to your personal hearing characteristics. Other listeners may well be able to tell the difference.
Incidentally, in the matter of patents, have you actually searched through existing patents to ensure that your designs won't infringe them? It is not unknown for patent trolls to wait for a business to be set up and start showing a profit then hit the business with patent suits which would be costly to defend.

 

That may be down to your personal hearing characteristics. Other listeners may well be able to tell the difference.

That's grasping at straws, especially considering that the difference in sound is significant depending on design or even a small change in a circuit, just not when you look at a THD measurement. THD is an average of the total harmonics. It is a useless measurement completely and utterly. Harmonic structure is the only factor that will give you limited insight, also making sure the high harmonics are low. Every audio engineer knows this.

I didn't do any specific patent searches as you are suggesting. Seems like it would be difficult to use such a search engine. Not sure how I would search for such obscure design practices.

 

I don't need to be actively spreading BS in order to attend trade shows and talk to the right people. Word spreads fast on head-fi.

You seem to be conflating "marketing" with "spreading BS". That's a common misconception. Advertising, good or bad, is just one tiny part of the job of marketing. I did marketing in the biotech industry for over 20 years and never once spent any money on advertising. If I had, it wouldn't have risked the reputation of my firm by including any BS in the copy. Repeat sales were too important.

You mentioned attending trade shows. That's also a small part of marketing and god knows I did my time manning a booth at tradeshows. But long before you show up at a trade show, you should have identified a need in the market and then figured out a way to satisfy that need. You need to know the customers, the competitors, and your own capabilities so well that you can carve out an opportunity for yourself. By the time you think of attending tradeshows you should have a good idea who your target customers are, where and how to connect with them, how many there are, what journals they read and so on.

Creating a new whiz-bang technology and then throwing it at the market in hope it will be embraced is not marketing, it's the hail-Mary pass at the end of a football game. It almost never works. I admit it's fairly common, though, and because so many try it, a few do succeed and that encourages others to try. But if you ask around much, you'll see that most of the experts in any field – like those around here – have seen the technology-looking-for-a-customer scenario. It's not a horse you'd want to bet on.

And you'd better get familiar with doing patent searches. No one is going to loan you time or money without some minimal homework on your part. I spent a significant part of my "marketing" hours studying the literature and patents

 

you should have identified a need in the market and then figured out a way to satisfy that need

Honestly my only goal is to create the best sound I possibly can. The target audience are people willing to pay for this, whatever the end cost may be. Audiophiles are the type to spend lots of money to achieve their goals so I don't think target market flexibility is a downside here.
Although I think realistically my stuff will end up costing somewhere between $150 to $1000 range depending on design model.

But if you ask around much, you'll see that most of the experts in any field – like those around here – have seen the technology-looking-for-a-customer scenario. It's not a horse you'd want to bet on.

Maybe as a blanket statement but regardless of technology if it doesn't sound "better" than what's the point. It wouldn't be technology I'd be selling per-se, it would be better results. If not then I wouldn't deserve to be there. There are better ways in easier fields to make money if I didn't simply have a better mouse trap.

 

Not sure how I would search for such obscure design practices.

IP Offices use published formal classification codes to identify fields of invention. Those codes are computer-searchable to enable you to pick out patents in a field of interest, e.g. amplifiers or DACs. You then need to read the 'Claims' of the patents to see if your designs/techniques fall within their scope. It is a lengthy process .

 

Honestly my only goal is to create the best sound I possibly can. The target audience are people willing to pay for this, whatever the end cost may be. Audiophiles are the type to spend lots of money to achieve their goals so I don't think target market flexibility is a downside here.

OK, that's a start. So how about doing some market research on that group?

If you're convinced that there are no measurements besides listening that can prove your story, then find some audiophiles to volunteer for a double-blind study and challenge them with two high-end amps versus yours. If they can pick yours out as different and desirable, you've probably got something. I think a study with as few as 5 people could be impressive if a statistically significant result comes out of it. You'd certainly learn a lot from the exercise.

Getting the testing done could be a challenge. Maybe your local university has a listening room, and you might even find some graduate students interested in helping with the study. Maybe the owner of a local hi-fi shop would allow use of a listening room and the 'control' amps. I don't know the answer, but be sure you find someone that knows how to run a legitimate listening test.

If your preliminary testing looks promising, consider paying for a genuine professional test. You can then use the results to solicit funding and later on for promotional materials.

 

Brand X speaker lovers won't care if you recommend brand Y. If your design sounds like shit on brand X, your reputation will take a nose dive to the nadir of the deepest abyss in the ocean.

Your design must beat all others within a hundred dollars of what you are going to charge. After all, you have a target audience. Download their flyers and compare.

Your ears are not the world standard.

 

Brand X speaker lovers won't care if you recommend brand Y. If your design sounds like shit on brand X, your reputation will take a nose dive to the nadir of the deepest abyss in the ocean.

Your design must beat all others within a hundred dollars of what you are going to charge. After all, you have a target audience. Download their flyers and compare.

I've never heard anything sound better at any price, I've listened to plenty of ultra expensive stuff up to $30,000. That's literally the entire reason I was inspired to start a business.
If their system sounds like crap on my system then their system is made out of potatoes plain and simple.

 

I've never heard anything sound better at any price, I've listened to plenty of ultra expensive stuff up to $30,000. That's literally the entire reason I was inspired to start a business.

No one is stopping you from starting your business. Your word about the wonders of your system is NOT ENOUGH. Some will want to see the specifications. Investors certainly won't take your word ... and you wouldn't be the first who has a problem with that hurdle.

Who knows, maybe you will be on the TV show Shark Tank or Rooster & Butch, trying to talk those investors into joining your venture. Good Luck.

Here is an investment opportunity that people have invested in .... enjoy the read.

 

Some will want to see the specifications. Investors certainly won't take your word ... and you wouldn't be the first who has a problem with that hurdle.

Why do specs matter if it sounds good? I don't want to perpetuate the false marketeering of THD. Even the existing audio companies that openly state how BS THD is still post THD measurements only because their customers demand to know, further perpetuating the cycle.

Who knows, maybe you will be on the TV show Shark Tank or Rooster & Butch, trying to talk those investors into joining your venture. Good Luck.

I've occasionally had this daydream in my head. To give you a perspective on my thought process, the way it usually plays out is that I'm just like "here, listen". Initial presentation over. Why waste time with words and specs?

 

Why waste time with words and specs?

It’s the price of admission.

To some degree I don’t even trust my own ears. I do over the long run, but not necessarily in any test environment other than my own living room. So good specs give some confidence that it’ll perform over a wide range of content and on a long term basis. Ever try an effect that sounds good at first but gets tiring after a while? My amp will do all that sort of stuff but I never use it.

You need to explain why your technology sounds better. (Or as I suggested earlier that skilled listeners agree it sounds better.). This gives the customer confidence that it’s not a trick or gimmick, but a genuine benefit they can’t live without.

 

Are you sure you haven't produced a beat note that cancels your tinnitus?

 

Well, if we are talking pure specs, I don't have the equipment to measure that far down. My solid state amplifier design has distortion below the threshhold of my audio analyzer which extends down to 130db-140db if I use heavy averaging. The theoretical distortion should be 0.000000000225% under any load.

My dac output stage is theoretically distortionless with effectively infinite slew rate (at least in theory) For practical numbers with this design I can only go off of spice but spice just says 0.000000%

My tube design measures around 40db better than specs I've seen for amplifiers using the same tube. Mine is between -112db to -120db for high order harmonics, -95db third, -60db second.
Comparing the performance of my power supply design to DIYaudio's famed super regulator in simulation, mine performs a thousand thousand times better @ 1hz and a thousand thousand thousand times better @ 20khz.

Raw performance specs are not my weak point. All these "impressive" specs go out the window when I add in distortion anyway, I have strong suspicion that certain implementations of imperfect power supplies can sound more euphonic (on my list of things to test) and as I've said earlier euphony is based in distortion so it must be added to the amp stages as well if I have euphony as a goal.
Of course there is no need to include my post-distortion, I have a distortion pot to adjust, my stages also won't be fully integrated so you can just not include my post distortion stages in the chain.

 

Then post your bode plot and increase the number of decimals in your sprice program.

The visual would be part of your presentation., Juxtaposed against your top three competitors in your desired market and price range. Then develope your business plan. You can visit the small business administration in the U.S. website or just search on the contents of a business plan. Absent that, sell your design to your competitor.

 

To some degree I don’t even trust my own ears

Same here, whenever I have a breakthrough I wait a few days and listen to it every morning when I wake up and before I go to bed. If I still feel the same way in a week then I know psychoacoustics are not the cause.

increase the number of decimals in your sprice program.

How do I do this in LTspice?

Absent that, sell your design to your competitor.

I've thought about this a few times. I feel like it would be giving my baby away. Plus to be honest I have practically no respect for most of the designers in this field after learning the topological and design typicalities employed by most of them. I'll be nice and leave it at that.
There's only a few engineers I know of that I can respect out of the whole bunch and none of them are mainstream. It's difficult to give away my stuff to people that I have little professional disrespect for.
I actually thought about applying to Schiit Audio for a job, they are like the Beats by dre of amps and dacs, mediocre quality but everyone knows them. The perfect place to be to influence the industry as a whole, but after reading their company biography I realized we are very far apart on topological and design philosophies to put it in a way. John Broskie on the other hand, I would love to team up with him. Unfortunately he doesn't have a "team" .