Elektor

At the AES convention I picked up a copy of Elektor magazine. There is also a website http://www.elektor.com  

I have wanted to learn about microcontrollers for a while but found the whole thing daunting. In just one issue of the magazine there were at least two projects that would be a good way to get my feet wet. One is a home stereo preamp with gerbers available on the wesite. They sell boards for the barometric pressure reader through the website. It's an all around good magazine with a lot of audio related projects and articles. Anyone familiar with it?

[edit: (Keith)] Spelling of magazine name corrected, to try and prevent confusion with another subject[/edit]

sure. here in The Netherlands it's known as Elektuur. I just ordered their latest audio-special. Should contain a diy-tubetester.

Yes, I read it every once in a while if I'm bored and hang around somewhere near the university library. They have a subscription and one can read it for free. I don't do it too often, because there is always way too much cool stuff to build in there... But over the last few years they got a bit too focused on µC stuff in my opinion, too little analog electronics. Besides the addiction that comes with it I always learn something new and it's a good way to keep up to date with recent developments. I think it's read by really many people that have a thing for electronics.


Volker

I grew up with Elektor in the 1970's.

There were a few electronics magazines which saw me into the hobby: the first was Everyday Electronics which was beginner-level. The second was ETI (Electronics Today International) which published modular synthesizer projects, Vocoders, and all sorts of other wonderful things, and the third was elektor.

I quickly outgrew EE, then moved onto the other two... LOVED them both. The fact that Elektor is still running is a fantastic thing. It's changed a little, but it was always a wonderful hobby resource.

Keith

volker said:

somewhere near the university library.

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+1 then, finally a chance to browse also all the back issues  
Like others said, indeed a nice magazine with at least in the past a healthy dose of music related projects.

I don't say they always hit the nail on the head (like their various guitar-circuits with 47k input impedance,
and some other stuff that made sense from the tech side of things but simply didn't sound right etc),
but at least they provided a wealth of inspiration.

Taling about magazines & libraries, I very much liked EW+WW (todays version is not the real thing anymore imho),
Funkschau had some nice DIY (no idea if they're still around w.r.t. DIY).

In the Netherlands the Elektor-name is also funny/smart at the same time: Elektuur... can be pronounced as E-Lektuur, (as in E-Mail), dunno if that holds in other languages as well ?

Bye,

 Peter  

I mentioned that before but I have been an Elektor reader since mid 70s, probably started at the same time as Keith. They used to cover a broad range of subjects with plenty of audio and music electronics of course. They had a lot of synth stuff in the late seventies. I (with a friend of mine) built my first power amp from it, 40W Edwin with 2N3055s on the output.  As Keith also said it is mostly embedded stuff now but still a good magazine. When I started buying it I could not afford every issue so I have a limited number of 70s issues but still have tons of 80s issues. I also have all the CDs since they went electronic format. They have a 300 series circuit collection books with loads of audio stuff but great majority of which is hi-fi. Every so often they link up with companies for special promotional stuff. Few years ago they covered a table top, flat bed CNC router which you could purchase as a kit. It was just over £1000. Although it required a bit of calibration it was still a good stuff. They published number of audio design books too. However, there can be quite dodgy bits in English translations and errors on circuits diagrams.

sahib said:

there can be quite dodgy bits in English translations and errors on circuits diagrams.

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Makes me wonder, where does this mag really originate from ? I know they do have a location in NL (Beek IIRC)
and it seems more than a trasnaltion-ofifce... 

I've read them since the mid 80's but these days "audio based" projects are few and far between.
Seems to be a lot of smd stuff and robot "gizmo's"

MM.

clintrubber said:

sahib said:

there can be quite dodgy bits in English translations and errors on circuits diagrams.

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Makes me wonder, where does this mag really originate from ?

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I believe they're originally Dutch; the name was changed to Elektuur three or four decades ago. Not sure where most of the technical content comes from nowadays; it looks like many of their guest writers are German.

JDB.
[reader since '81, have a subscription since '84]

Indeed it is originally Dutch and if I am not remembering wrong it was launched in 1975 and the English language version started in 1977. 

sahib said:

Indeed it is originally Dutch and if I am not remembering wrong it was launched in 1975 and the English language version started in 1977. 

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Just looked up some old german issues (1 edition each month, combined issue 07+08), january 1974 was No.38., so 1st.german edition might have been 09/1970. Judging from authors names, mixed german / dutch. That year TTL based circuits seemed most featured, some HF, some audio and the usual suspects as power supplies and dimmers.