ABOUT

Welcome to my website!

My life has always been connected in some way with music. From graduating music school and hosting school discos to building a fully DIY audio system at home. Along the way I learned many lessons - there were many moments of joy, many disappointments, but I also gained a great deal of experience about what really works and what doesn’t.

“DIY Audio” is my hobby. In other words, it’s not a source of income, and my formal education isn’t related to it. Yet this hobby encompasses everything I love: music + physics + mathematics + crafts. Over time, curiosity taught me how to solder, gave me a basic understanding of electronics, and even how to cut plywood properly. That’s where the name of my website - Crafted Stereo - comes from.

Every master was once a beginner.
This is the guiding principle behind my experiments with different ways to reproduce sound, my bold attempts to test audio myths, and my efforts to decipher the mystique of this “culture”. I’ve come to understand that:

• A perfect system does not exist;
• “Good/bad sound” is a subjective matter;
• In ultra-expensive systems, it’s often the owner’s EGO at work rather than the miracles of music gods;
• “Measurements aren’t EVERYTHING,” although they are the fastest way to achieve a desired goal;
• There are no “right” decisions, only compromises;
• An optimal system has to be good enough (Gudenoff), taking its cost into account.

My Philosophy of Sound Reproduction System

• Components coloured in green must be as clean, precise, neutral, and non-coloring as possible.
• The best place to introduce the desired distortions is in the preamplifier.
• The most important part of the system is the speakers.

This is where I have to express my opinion on tube technology. I regard tube sound much like E621 in food production or saturation in photography. We all understand that it’s a “lie”, but as long as it sounds delicious, it’s desirable. There’s no mystery here - a certain amount of additional harmonics simply sounds pleasant to the human ear.
However, tube-like E621 can be overdone. Using it in every circuit there will be just too much of “Audio Honey”. Some people enjoy it - not me. Moreover, employing tubes in phono equalizers or power amplifiers is technically problematic. For a long time, I personally avoided the topic of tubes. Yet, curiosity eventually prevailed, and today a tube preamplifier is an indispensable element in my system. Of course, another factor is that using tubes in this particular stage is relatively straightforward to implement.

If we decide on how tubes are to be used, it’s logical that the other circuits must be as I described earlier. Building a clean power amplifier or phono equalizer isn’t difficult. That’s why I always say that the most important part of the system is the speakers. It’s precisely here that engineers face the greatest challenges and where the most significant differences in sound are found.

This is my personal, humble opinion. It in no way diminishes the convictions or expertise of those who see things differently or of far more seasoned engineers. After all, I’m still a self-taught DIY Audio enthusiast, eager to share my experience with people who walk similar paths.

I hope you find something interesting on my website. Good luck on your journey!