take the NE5534, it has a lot of connentions to the internal chip that are not awaillable any more in later offerings. you can ad a discreet FET input by switching off the input devices and you can bias the output stage into class A and add a buffer. this OPamp switching is just not creative enough to lead to definitive conclusions. did you know that you can run the old philips "silver crown" chips on a much higher sampling rate ? people do not get any more clever because they are younger. try to catch an elefant with a spear.
Yup, and someone else said that man's own nature is contradictory. I personally think that we only advance by making mistakes... kind of like a ball that bounces between two opposed surfaces. I've always had this image of life in mind.
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Hmm... that's very much for insiders... we are just amateurs...
But I think it's not very creative either to limit your horizons to the old 5534 or the old Philips DACs, however tweakable they may be...
Ah BTW... the TI 5534 that was stock (but socketed) in my SVDAC05 was just listenable... The LT1028 being light years better. Also (I remember well) the LT1357 was a big improvement over the 5534...
Particularly where the 5534 suffered the most... i.e. in its kind-of unpleasantly constrained, amost screamy upper midrange. The LT1357 replaced that with a beautifully effortless sound, and more airy, and more extended and clear...
And the LT1028ACN8 improves on the LT1357 almost as much as the LT1357 on the TI 5534.
Particularly where the 5534 suffered the most... i.e. in its kind-of unpleasantly constrained, amost screamy upper midrange. The LT1357 replaced that with a beautifully effortless sound, and more airy, and more extended and clear...
And the LT1028ACN8 improves on the LT1357 almost as much as the LT1357 on the TI 5534.
I have asked another question,
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/soli...desks-production-cds-records.html#post1992418
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/soli...desks-production-cds-records.html#post1992418
yes, I'd prefer 5532 over 4562/49720NA anytime! but it's got a major lack of details...it sounds a bit distorted and tubey. a low THD rate doesn't mean a better SQ.
Many op-amps have a personal sound color in whatever circuit you'll roll them in...sure, matching the specs will only improve things, but you'll never get HIGH details from a 5532...it will only do the bare minimum, and if you are used to more detailed op-amps you will very soon feel bored to death.
Many op-amps have a personal sound color in whatever circuit you'll roll them in...sure, matching the specs will only improve things, but you'll never get HIGH details from a 5532...it will only do the bare minimum, and if you are used to more detailed op-amps you will very soon feel bored to death.
But what if that material has already passed through dozens of NE5532's to get to the CD or Vinyl
well, some ppl feel that anything the 5532 doesn't show you is not worth listening to...and could actually be harmful as the engineer didn't pay attention to it(for instance the 4562 likes to dig very deep and bring at the front some stuff you thought didn't even exist...it kills the SS depth to increase its width, it sounds VERY nasty after a while).
I don't really agree w/ this theory...otherwise we should all have Yamaha NS10M shoe boxes at home? 5532 are great for recording(if Neve and Lynx use them, there's good reasons I guess..cheap and does the job w/o any major coloring, but yet still not VERY detailed).
Some albums have been recorded on crappy 1/4" tape reels w/ crappy monitor speakers(like all the Black Ark era records from Lee Perry), the better your equipment the better they sound! it allows you to squeeze out every single drop of SQ from the low quality master source...the 5532 can pass a lot audio infos that it will NOT allow you to hear IMHO...the audio is all there, but it doesn't show it to you as it's pretty notorious for blurring small details.
it's like ppl who use photoshop to make women look better, they blur the skin grain and stuff like that..anyway, I'm running out of analogies for now ^^
I don't really agree w/ this theory...otherwise we should all have Yamaha NS10M shoe boxes at home? 5532 are great for recording(if Neve and Lynx use them, there's good reasons I guess..cheap and does the job w/o any major coloring, but yet still not VERY detailed).
Some albums have been recorded on crappy 1/4" tape reels w/ crappy monitor speakers(like all the Black Ark era records from Lee Perry), the better your equipment the better they sound! it allows you to squeeze out every single drop of SQ from the low quality master source...the 5532 can pass a lot audio infos that it will NOT allow you to hear IMHO...the audio is all there, but it doesn't show it to you as it's pretty notorious for blurring small details.
it's like ppl who use photoshop to make women look better, they blur the skin grain and stuff like that..anyway, I'm running out of analogies for now ^^
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nice, I will look into it!
both Cirrus Logic and BB advise to use LT1028/1128 as DAC/ADC LPF or I/V: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/chip...ng-audio-integrated-opamps-4.html#post1975101
I guess the BB engineers are not exactly biased?
What I ask though is this, and to quote,
"the 5532 can pass a lot audio infos that it will allow you to hear IMHO...the audio is all there, but it doesn't show it to you as it's pretty notorious for blurring small details."
Blurring small details ! But what if that sound (signal) has already been through some 5532's. Logic says that you can never recover that lost detail if that is in fact what is happening.
And I'm not trying to say the NE5532 is perfect... it's not and I have on several occasions "proved" to myself that it was this component that was causing a problem with subjective quality. But what if the material I used had been through many of these devices ?
The clearest example to me was a project I prototyped with TL072's and it was wonderful. The final build used NE5532/4 and a particular piano concerto sounded awful. There was one part, a decaying chord that seemed to have a "third" tone unrelated to the music present. Extremely subtle but it was nasty, and despite willing and wishing the NE5532 to be the better component it wasn't and switching to TL072's all was sweetness and light.
To make these judgements we need to be in possesion of all the facts. I would to have a list of some commercial recordings that have been mixed/processed etc with 5532's.
I don't think that the NE5532 lacks that much detail... at least not much more than the NE5534 does.
BTW they say that the JRC/NJM 5532 would be the best variant, don't know... but I know that if a brand like Accuphase (just the first that comes to my mind) uses them (the JRC I mean) in very high-end players and DACs, then they MUST be capable of sounding very very good! It's ridiculous to think differently.
I still think there's better...
BTW they say that the JRC/NJM 5532 would be the best variant, don't know... but I know that if a brand like Accuphase (just the first that comes to my mind) uses them (the JRC I mean) in very high-end players and DACs, then they MUST be capable of sounding very very good! It's ridiculous to think differently.
I still think there's better...
The most obvious and trouble-free upgrade to the NE5532/4 that come to my mind, with better sonics yet similar (nice) tonality, are the LT1357/8. Of course not in every possible application (they're much faster, after all)... but in most. The input bias current is half of that of an NE5532.
yes NJM is your best option I think..true for the 4580 at least..NJM4580D is really not a bad choice, if properly surrounded.
@Mooly: it will pass more infos than it will allow you to hear, if that makes any sense..let's just way that a more advanced op-amp will be able to extract audio bits from what the 5532 fed.
the 5532 has been the industry standard since the 70's, pretty much everything you hear has gone through hundreds of them.
@Mooly: it will pass more infos than it will allow you to hear, if that makes any sense..let's just way that a more advanced op-amp will be able to extract audio bits from what the 5532 fed.
the 5532 has been the industry standard since the 70's, pretty much everything you hear has gone through hundreds of them.
leeperry - the 5532 can't pass more information than it lets you hear because it's not binary information or I don't know what, it's analogue audio! It will pass all the information it can let you hear and nothing else, and whatever you expect to hear above that from a record (provided it was really recorded through 5532's) is just... things presented differently by other opamps, not more things presented. I guess
Anyhow, for me sound quality is not only details revealed, there's much much more to it... to the point that detail is a secondary aspect, because all quality opamps reproduce about all the detail that's supposed to be there - just differently the one from the other, with different emphases and shadows...
because it's not binary information or I don't know what, it's analogue audio! It will pass all the information it can let you hear and nothing else, and whatever you expect to hear above that from a record (provided it was really recorded through 5532's) is just... things presented differently by other opamps, not more things presented. I guess Anyhow, for me sound quality is not only details revealed, there's much much more to it... to the point that detail is a secondary aspect, because all quality opamps reproduce about all the detail that's supposed to be there - just differently the one from the other, with different emphases and shadows...
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I'm your polar opposite here: the only measurable advance in civilization is man's wisdom and inner maturity. Technology has nothing to do with man's civilization; at most, it has to do with man's (err...a portion of 'lucky' men
The key in the argument is ''measurable''. We can't argue that information isn't circulating faster via applied IT and networks in the 21st century for instance, and we can compare the advances, but our maturity on a human level will be forever arguable and relative between persuasions and civilizations and eras. Just another order of discussion, if you get my drift. But it is not arguable that more people will get a chance to civilize and mature by actually having cheap and fast access to knowledge. So tech increases chances by wider spread, accessible and better tools, for all the more people IMO. Was it Anton Chekhov, who said that electricity had done better for the people to his eyes than all politics and religions together up to then? Tech is the crown jewel in man's civilization IMHO, the only thing real, and measurable. Having a thumb finger was nature's biotech major advance, language was tech, first tools was tech, first sea navigation was tech. Each turn of mankind is marked by a turn in its popularly accessible tech. Look back and think about it.
Hi Mooly,
I did ask leeperry for a more fact based, technical reason for his statements but I see he doesn't have one, just more smoke.
Pull one out, stick another in without any regard for other elements in the circuit (and no understanding of the circuit itself apparently) and do a subjective listening "evaluation" on it.