From Thomas Strathmann Sent Mon, Nov 12th 2018, 11:24
From Thomas Strathmann Sent Mon, Nov 12th 2018, 11:24
On 11.11.18 22:06, Florian Anwander wrote:
> I have to admit, that my complete music electronics career (including
> being recording engineer for many famous artists) started 1979 with a
> Formant kit. Building this kit taught me a basic understanding, which
> enabled me twenty years later to write the german standard book about
> subtractive sound synthesis (which nearly another 20 years later still
> sells fine).
>
> But my intention was not to learn, but to buy a synth which is cheaper
> than those 2500 Deutschmarks for a Minimoog. I did not think for a
> second about learning.
When I started out in electronics there was the occasional small kit
that Iwould put together with the help of my father. The goal was to
practice. Not so much to learn about the theory of operation, not at
that age anyway. So, there you have another aspect of learning that kits
can help with.
When I buy kits today cost is not the driving force but availability.
I have build a couple of instruments because that was the only way to
get my hands on them. When I think about that other people might pay
someone to have those kits assembled for them I become acutely aware of
the time-money tradeoff (and also the tradeoff between owning tools,
having invested time in learning how to use them to debug, and so on).
Building kits or DIY in general is usually not cheaper, I'd say. There
are exceptions though.
Most of the learning I do (when I have the time) is by looking at
schematics or following online discussions, experimenting with ideas in
SPICE or on a breadboard. I wouldn't buy a kit for the express purpose
of learning about the theory of operation of the thing, simply because
the schematics and other documents are usually avaiable online. The
availability of those documents "for free" can be a deciding factor for
me when I contemplate buying a kit or whatever is available. So, much of
the learning is already done by the time I may assemble the kit --
unless I make a mistake and I have debug the circuit. ;-)
Thomas