OK, here is where we go off the deep end with my interest in audio and video. I got my first "serious" stereo system in 1970. It was a 40 watt Sherwood receiver, a Thorns turntable with a Shure cartridge and a pair of KLH model five loudspeakers. Above is one of my college stereo rigs with my old Empire turntable. Currently my gear is a little different.   

I finally phased out analogue and got rid of my turntable and 2000 or so LP's. I also got rid of my trusty laserdisc collection, which used to be the highest definition video source till DVD's came along. I got a good Sony professional CD burner and burned a hundred or so of my favorite LP's before they left. The very best of my analogue recordings sound better than the best digital I have heard, but it is quite a bother to maintain the analogue front-end. 

Here is Patrick with some of my beloved LP's on the way out

The newest generation of upsampling CD players and processors as well as SACD and Blue-ray audio formats seem to close the gap between CD-based digital playback and good analogue. Its hard to imagine that my current system is a "simplified" system. But, in fact, having only DVD, Blue-ray and CD as software formats, requires much less in terms of playback hardware. Below is the current system with the RPG "skyline" diffusors on the front and side walls.

I went through a period where I was listening to all tube gear which to my ear sounds very musical. But the tube gear runs hot and does not have the power needed for home theater applications. I am currently running an Cary Cinema 11a audio processor with Theta Enterprise and Dreadnaught solid-state amps.

My current speakers are Fried Reference transmission-line speakers in the front of the room with side and rear speakers by James Loudspeakers. The two big boxes on the sides of the room are a pair of Revel B15a 15" subwoofers, which do very nicely on movie soundtracks.

The latest addition to the playroom was a set of three reclining home theater seats. When they first came in, it looked like they were built to last for years, then my teenage son and his friends started watching movies, and two of the seats have had to go in for repair, go figure....

I started building speakers in the early 1990's with Bud Fried's transmission-line speaker "kits". The kits included very rough plans for constructing the cabinets and the drivers, crossovers and damping material. I made several generations of these speakers adding modifications with each generation. I finally, with a lot of help from a fellow speaker builder, started building original transmission line designs, with custom drivers, cabinets and crossovers. This is the inside of the latest generation of the transmission line subwoofer that I have designed and built. Actually, most of the design work was provided by a friend that lives in Pennsylvania. The transmission line cabinet is tapered from behind the driver to where the line terminates at the bottom of the cabinet. The enclosure is then filled with a specific amount of damping material.

Here is the finished satellite/subwoofer combination that is being enjoyed by a colleague here at the College. The series, first-order outboard crossover is located behind the speaker. This is actually an early version of the crossover, the current version has impedance compensation networks for both the mid and the sub drivers.