1-12-2016

World Premiere announcement!
OPEN HARDWARE HIGH-END
by Maarten van Druten  
 




Today 1 December 2016 I'm happy to announce a very exciting new project were we are working on, and it's called “Open Hardware High-End”


What is open hardware?

According the OSHW:

“Open Source Hardware (OSHW) is a term for tangible artefacts — machines, devices, or other physical things — whose design has been released to the public in such a way that anyone can make, modify, distribute, and use those things.”

Source: http://www.oshwa.org/definition/

Open hardware is all about giving control to the end-users so that they can make, study, develop, improve and share their own products.
Personally I think that sharing knowledge is important to make sure that products are developed further.
Open hardware also makes sure that the design stays with the people (users) and not by one company or organisation that controls, owns it.

To improve collaboration in the High-End community, and to make sure that everybody can build their own High-End equipment I have decided to share a series of “Open Hardware High-End” audio designs under the GNU-GPLv3 license.
These designs will be certified by the OSHW foundation, so that they receive the “OSHW open hardware” certificate.

So everybody is free to use these design, to improve on them, you can even make commercial products of them!
But the “source code” the original designs + improvement(s) you have made,
have to be well documented and given back to the community.
So that everybody will benefit from the improvements that are made.
This way the “design” will grow, become better over time
and the design will always be available for everybody! (infinite availability)

I'm very excited about this concept, and I hope that everybody that want to share her of his audio knowledge with the community will join us.

This way we can create audio products that people can make themselves, they can modify it the way they want it.
The people can improve their own products, they will learn from each other and best of all, they have full control of their own product!


What audio products are we going to release?

The first product that will be released under the “Open Hardware” certification will be a “High-Resolution add-on tweeter”
This tweeter will enhance the sense of realism in music by extending the frequency response of conventional Hi-Fi speakers up to 30kHz.
So that everybody can upgrade their current speakers by just placing this “High-Resolution add-on tweeter” on the top.
This add-on tweeter will have a minimal design audiophile cross-over (XO)
and it will be easy to build and very well documented and can be adjusted so that it will match every other speaker brand.

Although this tweeter can produce frequencies way above the theoretical limit of human hearing, the presence of these frequencies creates a sense of naturalness and reveals detail right down into the bass.
And it will enhance the musical experience of High-Resolution material like SACD, DSD and DXD.

After this there are plans to release "open hardware" designs for other audio products like:
a single ended mosfet zero feedback amplifier, a DSD only (chip-less) DAC and a high resolution audio streamer.
But this will be after the “High-Resolution add-on tweeter” has been successfully released.


Soon I will write more about this exciting project!

 


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