John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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bcarso

diyAudio Member RIP
Joined 2005
aural excitations

When I visited Aphex years ago the chief engineer had a bottle of cognac sitting on the shelf in his office. I thought Well this would certainly be a lot different than Harman!

But although I had heard the story about the company founder "inventing" the aural exciter based on a misassembled Heathkit amp (!) and having then hired an engineer to determine why he liked the sound of the mixing of the two channels together, the CE was rather given to downplaying the importance of that particular product to the company.
 
gpapag

gpapag

Member
Joined 2002
Paid Member
bcarso said:
"inventing" the aural exciter based on a misassembled Heathkit amp (!)
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~5 years ago I built two small guitar amp/ speaker boxes for my younger daughter’s electrical guitar study, one with tubes, the other with an LM3886.
The LM3886 amp developed a peculiar, very pleasant sounding (nice to watch it on the oscilloscope too) combination of an exciter/sustain effect when the guitar chords were played softly. When the chords were played harder, amp behaved normally.
It still works today. I haven’t dismantled it.
Should I apply for a patent?

George
 
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dvv

Member
Joined 2004
Groove T said:
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I am aware what all happens with the signal in the recording chain and wonder myself why it can sound so good sometimes on some hifi-rigs and vice versa the same song played on a different system can sound ugly for my taste.

What is really important to get a good listening impression/feeling?
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And that's the WHOLE point, that despite a complex signal path from the source to the medium and then on to the listener, some circuits will sound better than others.

So the question is - why do some devices/systems sound better to much better than others?

As with most such questions, you'll get about as many answers as the people you ask. Some will swear it's the topology, others that it's which parts you used, still others will say it depends on how you used the parts you used, etc. I don't think there is a single-fit-all answer. It's a mixture some took more trouble to investigate some variants on the basic theme to find a the best sounding one than most others did. But it can work backwards as well, you could take some mediocre circuits producing mediocre sound and fine tune it to make it better to much better.
 
Max Headroom

Max Headroom

Banned
Joined 2013
dvv said:
And that's the WHOLE point, that despite a complex signal path from the source to the medium and then on to the listener, some circuits will sound better than others.

So the question is - why do some devices/systems sound better to much better than others?
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A bunch of reasons.....BUT there is an interesting way to undo those systems signatures and render any system fundamentally pleasant all of the time.

Dan.
 
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luckythedog

Member
Joined 2009
dvv said:
So the question is - why do some devices/systems sound better to much better than others?.
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Because they all are imperfect, and require yer brain to create the illusion of realism. This is easier sometimes more than others, but variables involved are not necessarily those of purity, quite the opposite. Speakers and rooms especially so. Then there's the small matter of yer brain being unreliable and inconsistent over time, and everyone's being different of course.........
 
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