[StanD]

I hate that phrase that "those who can't do, teach".

No you ****wits, a great teacher can inspire hundreds of doers. He can equip them with the knowledge and the ability and push them to bigger things. There's a reason why I am in my current profession and it involved a great teacher.I benefitted greatly from her expertise and knowledge.

The key word is great. We need more great teachers, too many weaklings in the profession. I think I had 3 great teachers a few good ones and a load of mediocre ones.

 

[alreadyused]

Hey Jason,
 
Quick, we need news/hints of future Schiit. We've been reduced to arguing the merits of teaching as a profession...please help us.

 

[wink]

In the eternal quest for cleaner products, Jason and co. have come up with the #D#O#U#C#H#E. Clean sounding from any piece of audio gear.

 

[gikigill]

It doesn't pay to be brave if you are in danger of not having your contract renewed next year. My wife is a qualified teacher but will never work as one because of job insecurity. As a Banker, I would hesitate to give a loan to someone who doesn't have secure employment and that's a dilemma faced by a lot of educators.

It's hard for Teachers to be brave nowadays as they are flying on broken wings.

 

[StanD]

It doesn't pay to be brave if you are in danger of not having your contract renewed next year. My wife is a qualified teacher but will never work as one because of job insecurity. As a Banker, I would hesitate to give a loan to someone who doesn't have secure employment and that's a dilemma faced by a lot of educators.

It's hard for Teachers to be brave nowadays as they are flying on broken wings.

Other than for teachers, tenure does not exist, so they don't have it all that bad. Now, lets get back to headphones and related Schiit.

 

[wink]

Radical new ideas that upset the status quo are usually severely frowned upon.
 
Schiit is educating the audio world on how to supply good low cost gear relative to their competitors.

 

[jcx]

  Chapter 5:
So Ya Wanna Get Into the Biz?
...
 
Getting Started: The Engineering Path
 
Yes, I’m gonna be unfair and start with engineering. Engineering really is the cornerstone of great audio. It’s the easiest way to get in, whether you’re starting your own company, or want to work for one.
 
Note: easiest =/= easy.
 
“So now you’re gonna tell me to go out and get an engineering degree, right?”
 
Nope. Not at all. There are plenty of great audio engineers with no degrees. However, a degree will be helpful if you’re shooting at a medium-to-large company. Even if they have small “great audio” enclaves, you’re still probably gonna go through the churn-n-burn of a corporate HR department. That means: no degree, no job.
 
And, in reality, I have used little of the higher math that I learned in school. S and jw domain control stuff, sure, a little bit. But much of it isn’t much more than basic algebra, backed by measurements, and underpinned by deep knowledge of how basic devices (transistors, tubes, etc) work.
 
I’ll illustrate. At school, one of the classes I had to take was engineering thermodynamics. Now, thermodynamics are very important. You’re not going to be able to design a reliable power amp without understanding thermo. However, the way professors go about it is absolutely dumb. They’ll show you a “heatsink” with a weird cross-section that’s circular and triangular and just plain wrong, and ask you to calculate its heat dissipation with differential equations.
 
When first confronted with this, I sat back in my chair and said, “That’s dumb. Just look at the surface area and ambient temp, and you’re close enough for any practical application.”
 
Yeah, that professor didn’t like me.
 
Bottom line, school complicates a lot of the basics of engineering with complex math that you’ll probably never use. That math may be useful if you’re looking to get a paper published in an IEEE journal, or if you’re working on new DSP algorithms, or if you want to be a Ph.D in residence at a large company, but in day-to-day work, it’s overkill. I nearly dropped out of engineering before they got to the control-system shorthand stuff…and even that I’ve only used a handful of times.
 
Plus, schools concentrate on simple circuits that are fundamentally unlike what you’ll encounter in audio. After doing an “audio amplifier” on a breadboard in an engineering lab, seeing the schematic of an actual working audio amplifier will be overload. You’ll wonder why the heck it’s so complicated—even if it’s a relatively simple design.
 
What I’m saying is, if you’re expecting to come out of school and immediately be useful to a small-to-midsize great audio company, think again…you’re gonna be fundamentally unprepared for the reality.
 
So what do you do?...

it may be harder to find the right analog design position today but bigger company experience early is valuable to a budding degreed EE - you should have resources and mentors - get to see the whole development and release process - stay long enough for a couple of projects - present your designs to review committees with century+ man years of domain specific engineering experience, shepherd your device though mega$ equipped compliance labs, talk with, learn from the test engineers, techs, engineering managers (though not always learning as much from what managers say as what happens despite their project plans, schedules, Gantt charts)
like the university experience - mid to large company experience can be a very concentrated educational experience - the opportunity to learn things you may never become aware of striking off on your own to "follow your muse" from day zero

 

[superjawes]

I hate that phrase that "those who can't do, teach".

No you ****wits, a great teacher can inspire hundreds of doers. He can equip them with the knowledge and the ability and push them to bigger things. There's a reason why I am in my current profession and it involved a great teacher.I benefitted greatly from her expertise and knowledge.

I pefer something from one of my favorite high school teachers:

"The A's teach. The B's do."

And I think she also added something about the C's becoming managers, too...

 

[StanD]

I pefer something from one of my favorite high school teachers:

"The A's teach. The B's do."

And I think she also added something about the C's becoming managers, too...

I think Dilbert's pointy haired manager was an F.

 

[superjawes]

I think Dilbert's pointy haired manager was an F.

The Dilbert Principle

 

[StanD]

The Dilbert Principle

I prefer The Peter Principle.

 

[Insidious Meme]

Hey Jason,

Quick, we need news/hints of future Schiit. We've been reduced to arguing the merits of teaching as a profession...please help us.

Haha I wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't come back for a few days. You'll just have to come back later.

 

[Rotijon]

Hmm since reading jason's book, ive started to become very interested in amplifier design and would like to at least build one and be able to understand schematics.

Considering that a person is a complete electrical engineering idiot, not knowledge of resistors etc whatsoever, what would be a good first step other than cordell's book. 

 

[Ableza]

  Hmm since reading jason's book, ive started to become very interested in amplifier design and would like to at least build one and be able to understand schematics.

Considering that a person is a complete electrical engineering idiot, not knowledge of resistors etc whatsoever, what would be a good first step other than cordell's book. 

In all honesty a good first step is to see if there is an adult education class available in your area on basic electricity, and on things like soldering technique.  And then look for a pre-fab kit that you can assemble as a way of applying those basic skills.  And buy yourself a good quality DMM (digital multi-meter) a set of magnifying lenses and a decent soldering station.

 

[StanD]

 
In all honesty a good first step is to see if there is an adult education class available in your area on basic electricity, and on things like soldering technique.  And then look for a pre-fab kit that you can assemble as a way of applying those basic skills.  And buy yourself a good quality DMM (digital multi-meter) a set of magnifying lenses and a decent soldering station.

And a bunch of proper tools, some beginner books, lots of time to invest and the willingness to go through a lot of Schiit to get there.