Hey, fellow audio nerds. I'm a long time lurker, first time poster. I've always been an audio guru, even going back to high school. I'm a physicist by degree (undergrad) who works in the medical device industry. I've been involved in music since I was about 7. In college I had the privilege of touring all over the USA, and a good bit in Europe with my college wind ensemble (band). After grad school I also played in a 48-member professional wind ensemble for 15 years, as well as having my own quartet who gigged around the Twin Cities. I think it is my music performance background that really started my interest in high fidelity music reproduction. I am also an avid woodworker with a pretty solid background in electronics, so I am especially keen on building my own speakers and amp. Which is what brings me here - looking forward to a community of like-minded builder types (and of course folks who just enjoy audio). I have a very eclectic music collection that covers just about all the genres. One genre I have a lot of (that most folks probably don't) is wind ensemble literature (well duh, right?). I love wind ensemble music, not just because I played it for so long, but because the nature of the wind ensemble results in music so wildly different from that of the orchestral music most are so familiar with. I really enjoy orchestra, too - don't get me wrong, but wind ensembles can product so much greater variety in color and timbre of sound. And wind ensembles can do space, where orchestras cannot. I mean, try to imagine a Sousa march transcribed for orchestra. I've heard it and it can't compare. It all boils down the the physics of the instruments. In an orchestra, most of the instruments product sound the same way - vibrating strings (which is why they can't do space - strings don't instantly stop vibrating). In a band you have brass and single reeds and double reeds that produce sound in different ways from each other and blend together differently (yes, I know there are more than strings in an orchestra, but they make up the bulk of the instruments). This makes bands far more difficult to get in tune than an orchestra. But just like an aerobatic airplane has to be very unstable to do what it does, so too a band has musical agility across many genres and styles, if not an agility that is difficult to control.
Okay, diatribe over. I just love the physics of sound and music. Glad to be here and to meet (all) your acquaintances.
