equipment

[Daniel Gendreau]

> and of course - the best tool of all - any kind of audio input to
> your PA or
> anything, so you can hear your circuit working.

This is extremely useful, but one note of Caution:
Its a good idea to use some sort of preamp which limits the (audio)power of
the signal. I am not talking about anything fancy like a compressor(though
that would be great).

The first time I worked with audio electronics was on a school project
building a waveform generator using a 68000 and a DAC. I build a little
headphone amp using an opamp so I could listen to the output while I was
coding/testing it. Something went very wrong in the software... Needless to
say it was painfully loud. If I been using a PA or stereo I probably would
have blown the speakers.

Had I instead used a preamp with clipping, I would have avoided that
unpleasant incident. Luckily, my hearing was not damaged in any perceivable
way (I'm sure I lost a few frequencies there...).

Just thought I would let someone else learn from my experience(read:
stupidity :)

-Dan Gendreau