Build Your Own CD?

Well, Albert wins the cool guy award looks like. Khan, since you're friends with him, you get cool guy honorable mention. I'm with thorty40, how much for this, this, creation?

actually, i'm not friends with him really. i just bought a preamp and a cd tube buffer (when i needed it) from him and thought, MAN this guy really, really, really knows what he's doing, he's super nice, and his prices are so low it's stupid. See, i believe South Park's original post is right. this stuff that wadia, audio research and the likes can be done for a fraction of their sales prices. when you buy from them you're paying their advirtising, r&d, payoffs to certain publications, owner's yachts, all that crap - which they deserve in my opinion because they worked hard to create their companies. but when you hear a real set up system of a knowedgeable do-it-yourselfer there is just no comparison - the quality is HUGE and the prices are tiny. I think albert is that kinda guy. if he would try to market himself better he'd really go far, the the yacht and we'd be back to where we started with the other guys, paying $3000 for his $300 introductory preamp. the fact that this little Space-Tech Laboratory $300 preamp held up to a $3000 arc preamp actually pisses me off. and you know what, arc didn't hand-wire that new preamp, and they didnt' pack it up for you after they did and send it out asap so you could enjoy your music the sooner the better and they didn't write long long letters to you about setting it up and they didn't talk you out of their higher priced items because the rest of your system wouldn't gain from it at that time. i could go on - sorry, i just got on my high horse there for a moment.

anyway, albert's a cool guy but i never met him. maybe he'd take a swing at me if he really knew me for who i really am. but in cyberspace this guy's a winner.

in fact, he's a mad-scientist type and doesn't visit audiogon and didnt' even know audioreview and some other places like that existed. I'm the one who told him about this thread so he'd respond. I'll tell him again.

sorry about the rant, i just came off a nap.

For Marantz cd 57, 60, 63, 67 and SE versions of each. They also have a complete DIY DAC project for die-hard tweaker, plus a cd-clock upgrades.
http://www.tnt-audio.com/clinica/tweaks.html

Here's another using the Phillips 1252-10 cd engine
http://www.geocities.com/agalavotti/cdpro.htm

Here's another for a Technics SL-PG 580
http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~carnivor/cdp/cdp.html

This one has a bunch of DIY DAC's
http://www.diyaudio.de/

A 24/96 DAC
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Galaxy/6623/24bitdac.html

This DAC has a tubed out put & sells PCB's
http://www.megabaud.fi/~jtolonen/projects/projects.html

Tubed DAC w/ $125 PCB from SDS Labs
http://www.clarkson.edu/~stokessd/dac.html

Hope this helps prove that it's possible.

darkmoebius, COOL post bruthah.

I don't have the skills yet, but I would love to make one of the tubed DAC's and see how it fairs against Aj! Tjoeb's line.

I'm currently doing my home work on building a set of 300B tubed monoblock amps and a tubed linestage pre-amp. Not only will it be challenging, but I could never afford the level of performance that I'll be able to build in. The amps should cost $1,200 US and the pre-amp is an Electric Tonalities Foreplay kit at $290 w/ full upgrades. The Foreplay can be tweaked to near "reference" performance. Who knows, though. I'll have to try it and see. I suppose after that, I'll need to try my hand at speakers.