I grew up in Durban, South Africa and after serving a 4 year apprenticeship as a radio communications technician went to work for a Durban based industrial electronics company as a lab technician in the development department. After a few years, I transferred to marketing and a bit later spent a year in the USA (Lakeland, Florida) as a technical product manager with the same outfit, responsible for product set-up and calibration at the agent importing and distributing South African industrial electronics into the USA (believe it or not). I returned to South Africa and ended up in product design and development for 7 yrs doing lots of exciting things in the industrial instrumentation field. In 1993, my family and I left South Africa and we settled in the UK. Fast forward 3 years and redundancy, and I got a job at Philips Semiconductors (now NXP) in Hazelgrove, Manchester, where I remained for 20 years. I spent the first 10 years as a Product Line Manager (5 years in automotive and then 5 years multimarket). The opportunity to go to Asia and head up regional marketing for NXP’s Multi-market Semiconductors came up in 2006 and my wife and I subsequently spent 10 years in Asia (Japan, Taiwan and China), eventually ending up over there as VP of regional marketing and applications. I retired in 2015 and rather than go into management and/or marketing consulting which most people with my background do, I started Ovation High Fidelity alongside Hifisonix.com – in both instances, an opportunity for me to continue doing what I always really enjoyed: designing and building electronics, but now with an emphasis on audio.
This specific website started in 2012 as a place where I could blog about my rekindled interest in all things audio after a twenty-year hiatus. I subsequently published several DIY articles and now have a regular following of DIY audio fanatics. Things took off after I published the sx-Amplifier and nx-Amplifier designs in 2012, and by 2015 Hifisonix had received over 1 million hits. More recently, the kx2-Amplifier, which builds upon the sx-Amplifier, has sold over 150 PCB sets, while the total number of sx, nx and kx2 amplifier PCB sets as of 2021) sold is close to 400. One of the most popular posts has been ‘How to Wire Up an Audio Amplifier’ which has been referenced dozens of times across the web and downloaded hundreds of times. Early in 2020, the X-Altra MC/MM Phono Preamp, featuring state-of-the-art noise, distortion and overload performance, was published in the US magazine ‘audioXpress’ (you can find links to the audioXpress resources page in the link above). Early in 2024, the ax-Amplifier was published in the same magazine. Most of the designs featured on the Hifisonix pages here also have threads running over on diyAudio.com, where, if you’ve never visited it, you’ll find an international community of like minded diy audio folk discussing and building all sorts of fantastic gear.
I hope you enjoy the Hifisonix website and that it will help you have fun building better amplifiers, preamplifiers and supporting circuits. There are power amplifier projects, line preamplifiers, vinyl preamps and support boards, all with full build instructions, BOMs and PCB availability. As always, if you have questions, I’ll be happy to answer them.
Thank you for visiting hifisonix.com.