NwAvGuy: The Audio Genius Who Vanished (2014)

I used to be fairly active on a popular Headphone Forum, both before and after NwAvGuy appeared and disappeared on that forum.<p>Nobody with a real engineering background and strong belief in the scientific process could actively participate in that community and maintain a healthy state of mind. Lots of people simply cannot let go of the possibility that maybe they cannot actually hear they things they claim they can, and there is a severe psychological bias to supporting people&#x27;s fancies, spending, and quests for &quot;perfection.&quot;<p>NwAvGuy is unique in that he tried to educate (and was very adamant about this) the community and designed a superior and relatively inexpensive DAC&#x2F;Amp to show people that many other people building eqiupment were full of crap. And because of this I think somebody would have tried to harm him if he ever revealed his identity - I&#x27;m not exaggerating.<p>There were&#x2F;are a lot of people who tried to help on that forum by presenting general engineering principles and sensible methodologies (e.g. volume matching) for testing. And eventually they all stopped participating because any push towards a scientific methodology was responded to with vitriol and hate.<p>So I&#x27;m not surprised he just vanished. I used to get attacked for asking the most basic questions (e.g. did you try to volume match when comparing two amps). I can&#x27;t imagine the hell he went through. Why would you tolerate that hostility for a hobby?

Is it really a violation of the ND clause to PRODUCE something from a changed version of the &quot;SOURCE CODE&quot; (so to speak)? As long as the changed version is not being distributed...?

Quote from the &#x27;details&#x27; page [1]<p><i>&quot;Perfboard DIY – Don’t try this! While a basic Cmoy might work cobbled together on perfboard or protoboard the O2 is different. The higher performance and greater complexity mean you’ll almost certainly have problems without using a proper PC board.&quot;</i><p>Does anyone have any insight into the nature of the problems that might result from a quick lash up on Veroboard?<p>PS: the comment made in the OA about the verbosity of NwAvGuy certainly struck a chord!

According to whois he&#x27;s still around as of 2015:<p><pre><code> Domain Name: NWAVGUY.COM Registrar: 1 &amp; 1 INTERNET AG Sponsoring Registrar IANA ID: 83 Whois Server: whois.1and1.com Referral URL: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;1and1.com Name Server: NS57.1AND1.COM Name Server: NS58.1AND1.COM Status: ok https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.icann.org&#x2F;epp#OK Updated Date: 10-mar-2015 Creation Date: 09-mar-2007 Expiration Date: 09-mar-2016</code></pre>

I was very pleased yesterday to see someone posted one of his articles. When I first discovered him a few years ago I read them with great enthusiasm; all the electrical theory I learned came together and clicked (for audio anyways)

I was recently in the home of an old friend who reps for a few ultra high end audio companies. The entry level speakers were $30k. The mids, $90k. The 700lb top shelf models? $220k.<p>Some things exist purely so they can have their purchase price shared and in the instance of high end audio, I can only imagine the margins involved.<p>If this guy made the waves the article implies then someone in the industry tracked him down and incentivized him to go away.

The solution is simple: 1) make your design changes 2) email the NwAvGuy with your plans and a requested deadline of 30 days for a response 3) if he does not respond negatively by the deadline, feel free to proceed with your plans 4) NwAvGuy may then choose to pursue legal means of enforcing his strange license choice, or not<p>I&#x27;m betting not.

This is an advertisement - Any time there is a model number or a price in an article it has been placed by someone who paid to have the article written.<p>EDIT - I guess people don&#x27;t understand why they see articles like this when they do.