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Angry Jesus writes:
There is a lot of snake oil in the audiophile world. A few years ago the pseudonymous NwAvGuy decided to do something about it. Not content to just criticize the hucksters, he designed a $130 headphone amp that competes with $1000 models. NwAvGuy released the design under the Creative Commons CC BY-ND license (attribution, no derivatives) and freely collaborated on revising it with multiple manufacturers looking to build and sell the amp. All he wanted was credit and to see that no one would take his design and degrade it with inferior modifications.
Then he disappeared. "In July 2012, NwAvGuy went silent. E-mails weren't returned, and blog posting ceased. 'He had gone quiet before -- for a month or so,' says Boudreau. But no one has heard a peep from NwAvGuy in more than a year and a half."
Since then some of the parts used in the last revision have been discontinued and one of the best values in high fidelity audio can't be manufactured anymore because NwAvGuy is no longer around to approve any changes.
(Score: 5, Informative) by VLM on Wednesday March 26 2014, @08:08AM
Pretty sure his name was Hans Camenzind. An extremely highly respected analog EE who did some important amp design work and died in his sleep a short time after the blog went dark. You may have heard of one of his side projects, the 555 timer chip, although I always thought of him as an amp guy. He was a reasonably good author, for an EE, and his writing is vaguely consistent with the writing in the blog. At least there was nothing in the blog that stuck out like a sore thumb thinking of the last time I read his book(s). He also wrote non-EE stuff.
The overall story and writing style sounds a lot like a long format Bob Pease magazine article, I grew up reading those, so I should know its a good match, and certainly fit his very public outlook on audiophiles, and Pease was one of the old amp guys so this would be right up his alley. Pease died about a year earlier so its not him.
Could be a protege or fan of those two guys. Different designers have a "language" sorta how they do stuff and talk about stuff and if its a protege its probably a protege of Pease. I'm in the Pease fan club and I could probably have pulled off that amp design, at least if it was my best day ever. I think on SN you all know how after working with some programmers for awhile the code they work on acquires a certain smell and you an tell at a glance who wrote certain code, and its kinda the same way with analog EE stuff. Its unconscious and takes some effort to explain why you know its so-and-so's design but you can tell at a glance. Like art, or music.
Its amusing how the wise old elders wear off on the new kids. Why do I backpack / hike long distances as my primary form of athletic exercise? Why, because Pease did. Not all the surprising, I learned how to troubleshoot ground loops from him and how to deal with ultra high impedance inputs. Then again I don't drive 50 year old VWs like he did or whatever other habits he had.
I have no inside knowledge and short of someone violating secrecy we'll probably never know but its either someone inspired by Pease or it was Camenzind. Its a tradeoff between what it looks like and general outlook on designing vs being in the right place at the right time with the right skills.
If I put a couple hours into it comparing work instead of just reminiscing for mere minutes, I could probably generate a fairly definitive answer, but its not worth it.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 26 2014, @02:06PM
You could be right about Pease, but it seems unlikely that NwAvGuy was Camenzind, because his last blog comment was almost a week after Camenzind died. Also, each comment had to be manually approved by him, due to rampant spam and trolling.
The last comment that shows up on the most recent post was written on August 28, 2012, so unless he had someone else moderate comments after his departure, that puts a lower bound on his date of death/disappearance.
(Score: 2) by hatta on Wednesday March 26 2014, @03:03PM
I think on SN you all know how after working with some programmers for awhile the code they work on acquires a certain smell and you an tell at a glance who wrote certain code, and its kinda the same way with analog EE stuff. Its unconscious and takes some effort to explain why you know its so-and-so's design but you can tell at a glance. Like art, or music.
Birders have a similar concept. Just through a glimpse of a bird's motion, an experienced birder can identify it. They call it "jizz". Not kidding.