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A very colorful figure of the Istanbul Hi-Fi circles, Deger Terem happens to be the only professional manufacturer working in the field of Hi-End Audio in Turkey. His main specialties are tube power and preamps but he also builds speakers. The name of his company is D&B Lab. He is in a sense the "Luthier of the Reproduced Music". "My Friends" who are using D&B Lab products are the followings (do click and visit their pages for more details): Sedat Mirkelam, Kamil Sukun, Faruk Eczacibasi, Tuncel Gulsoy I visited his workshop on 25 November 2000 and was truly impressed by its tidiness and coziness. Click the thumbnails to enlarge and see for yourself. He is currently working on two projects: a preamplifier that he is about to finish and a new speaker of which he has completed one of the pair (see the bottom picture on the left). Here is the summary of his biography: Deger Terem was born on 1939 in Istanbul. On 1955 when he was in high school his parents bought him a turntable. In order to better complement his new turntable and get a better sound from his system, Deger dismantled the old receiver and built a tube amp with the help of a schematic that he had found in an American electronic magazine. The result was so successful that he then decided to make it a profession. Years later he graduated from Istanbul Technical University as electronic engineer. In 1956 he formed a jazz group and toured with them for three years and gave concerts. Following the group's break-up he composed a "Concerto for Tenor Saxophone and Orchestra" and a "Concertino for Trombone and String Orchestra" (both works are unfinished). The famous Turkish classical composer, Cemal Resit Rey had reviewed both of his compositions, transcribed and played them on piano. Liking them very much he encouraged Deger to finish both compositions and to perform them. But later his professional occupation kept his so busy that he could not spare any time for them. After completing his military service, in 1970 he founded D&B Electronic Laboratory (used as D&B Lab. in logo format) in partnership with his friend Batur Pere (D&B stands for Deger & Batur) and started to build high quality tube amps and speakers. Shortly after Batur Pere left the company, but as this was an amicable split Deger did not want to change the company's initial name. In 1980's Deger wrote more than ten articles for American and British electronic magazines. He has got 20 patented amplifier circuits of his own as well as 6 passive and 2 active crossover network circuits. Deger Terem is married with the painter Ulku Terem since 30 years; they have one son who also became electronic engineer and now builds computers. Deger, what is your design philosophy? a) My main concern is reliability. Most of the time I oversize components in order to extend their life expectancies. I select the operating voltages of the tubes with the aim of extending their life. Of course, this attitude adversely affects the cost of the components. An amplifier that I built in 1981, which worked 6 days of the week, 10 hours a day was recently brought back for servicing. I measured the tubes and was shocked to notice that all tubes were in perfect condition. The customer said that they were very happy with the amplifier but after so many hours of operation they assumed that something must have been replaced. I cleaned its dust and just sent it back. b) I try to use, as much as possible, locally available components. c) I aim to make sound my amps better than their direct competitors. I think I succeeded to achieve this during the last six years. On many direct comparisons the audience have voted in favor of my amps. The same is also valid for my preamps. d) In tube amps Output Transformer is the brain and the mains transformer is its heart. I try not to make any sort of compromises on these components. I use special alloy wires. Cost is no object here; my main purpose is not to make money but to make my amps sound good. The wires that are composed of 50% gold and 7 % silver are two million times more expensive than the normal copper wire, but their sonic differences are so big that I don't hesitate using the expensive solution. Such good results are giving me extreme satisfaction. Mains transformer is also very important. My designs draw 10 thousand times less idle current than the competition. I try to go to concerts very often and try to get as close as possible to the sounds I hear during such concerts. For 46 years I have worked very hard to achieve improvements in this area. The music genres that you like? I have listened to jazz music since the age of 6. But after 1970's jazz got spoiled. I don't like its derivatives such as pop-jazz, rock-jazz or free-jazz. When I was 18, a girl friend of mine gave me the LP of Brahms' Piano Concerto No.1. It was performed by Wilhelm Kempff and Dresden PO. I went home and started to listen. I probably listened 20 times until the morning. Since then I have begun listening to classical and eventually even more than jazz. Later on I started to listen to chamber music more than the orchestral. How much do you think you achieved your goals? I have various goals. But I can easily state that I achieved 98% of my professional goals, of course this does not mean that I made money. I don't know why but making money has always had a secondary importance for me. I'm happy to have achieved the 98% because I know that I will never reach the remaining 2%. As I'm a perfectionist, whatever I do there will always be an unreachable 2%. I should also mention the importance of the very great support of my music and Hi-Fi lover wife. Why always tube, nothing but tubes? This is a very elaborate subject. Home Electronics magazine will start to publish my article in December 2000 issue. I guess it will last 5 or 6 issues. Your favorite manufacturers? Turntable: Michell Gyrodec, Alfason 100 Tone arm: Grace 707 Cartridge: Van den Hul MC-1 CD Player: California Audio Lab, Onkyo DX7711 Speaker: Thiel 7, Snell A-3 Tuner: Parasound Audio lab Preamp: Paragon (tube), Electro Research (ss) Power Amp: Michaelson & Austin VAC 7B (tube), Electrocompaniet (ss) What do you think about the future of High-End Audio? I sincerely think that as long as there will be good music and music lovers Hi-End Audio will survive. Music lovers will always want to get as close as possible to the live performance in their home environment. There will be people who will make do with things like MP3's or home theater systems, like they exist today, but the genuin audio lover will not. D&B Lab. Products Preamps: P-12 Phono 7 tubes, and separate power supply module P-12 Line 4 tubes, and separate power supply module P-15 Uses special "anti-jitter" type tube. This model has no phono version P-17 This is a very versatile preamp which has: - subwoofer out - center channel out - 200 ohm, 10Kohm fixed and 20Kohm variable outs - phono MM & MC, CD, tuner, line1 and 2 inputs It has 12 tubes and a separate power supply module with 2 more tubes.   Power Amps: SM-265 2 x 65W RMS, full class A, stereo 4 x EL34 + 6 x ECC83 M-80 80W RMS, full class A, mono 2 x EL37 + 2 x E83CC M-150 150W RMS, full class A, mono 4 x EL37 + 3 x E88CC + 3 x E83CC M-250 250W RMS, class A up to 150W then AB2, mono 8 x EL35B + 2 x ECC81 + 2 x E88CC + 6 x ECC803S   Speakers Reference A-1 "Monitor" 2-way 34 (h) x 19 (w) x 28 (d) cm Reference A-2 "Studio" 2-way 87 x 21 x 33 Raference A-3 "Orchestra" 3-way Transmission Line 99 x 23 x 40 Reference A-4 "Grand Orchestra" 4-way Transmission Line 128 x 26 x 51 You may reach Deger Terem by: e-mail: degerterem@mynet.com web site: www.vocalese.com Phones: +90-216-368 73 23 +90-216-368 56 40 +90-532-293 06 31 Address: Ataturk caddesi, Ata Apt. No. 63, D:26, Sahrayicedid, Erenkoy, Istanbul