John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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No it isnt crap. You just think of it in a certain fixed view. Like you do with polar caps for coupling .... ignoring the real practical effects - such as, degraded leakage affects on circuit over time and temp.

If you test with asymet signal... you can see undesired, practical circuit effects/behaviour in some actual designs. Just try it. None of this -> it can all be broken down to sinewaves stuff, either. Which it could but, you wont find some of the actual circuit misbehavior. Of course, when you find it, you can design it out.



THx-RNMarsh

I am sure other industries using standard T&M gear and methods are also missing this critical circuit misbehavior from asymmetrical waveforms?

Regarding polar coupling caps - pretty sure there are millions of happy consumers of audio devices using them without a problem. No doubt including some Stereophile Class A+ gear in the five-figure price range. I just don't see the practical impact, even if they are obviously not ideal.
 
Richard, these all seem very testable, and frankly your description of "asymmetric" signals is a DC bias applied to any sort of other test signal. What's so revolutionary about this?

Now the whole music is different to sine waves is hocus pocus. Any basic signals book from your soph/junior level EE curriculum goes through this stuff stuff rigorously.
 
I think that it is appropriate to put in one of the Hirata papers also, so people can see different waveforms that are hard to produce with just sine waves, and are asymmetrical in character. The Hirata test is one of the most interesting that I have ever found that is usually unknown to typical engineers. I have tried it, and it works!
 
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I am sure other industries using standard T&M gear and methods are also missing this critical circuit misbehavior from asymmetrical waveforms?

Regarding polar coupling caps - pretty sure there are millions of happy consumers of audio devices using them without a problem. No doubt including some Stereophile Class A+ gear in the five-figure price range. I just don't see the practical impact, even if they are obviously not ideal.


I am sure T&M gear wouldn't use the cheap and poorly made, unstable, unreliable parts we accept in Audio gear.

Yes, lots of people like music from what ever. so what?

THx-RNMarsh
 
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Richard, these all seem very testable, and frankly your description of "asymmetric" signals is a DC bias applied to any sort of other test signal. What's so revolutionary about this?

Now the whole music is different to sine waves is hocus pocus. Any basic signals book from your soph/junior level EE curriculum goes through this stuff stuff rigorously.


OK. So? Do asym tests on some variety of real, physical amp topologies, then. Throw in some tube designs also.

What if the levels of distortion are different for + and - asym waveforms? And, what if the THD meter shows a lower distortion average of the two?

See if there are some new insights. An ARB gen could be useful. Go for it.


Just sayin'


THx-RNMarsh
 
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OK. So? Do asym tests on some variety of real, physical amp topologies, then.

See if there are some new insights. An ARB gen could be useful. Go for it.


THx-RNMarsh

I'm not the one proposing its utility or some kind of new insight. Burden of proof and stuff, right? Especially since I a.c. couple my gear, nor power my equipment off multiple circuits to get huge potential differences between boxes.

Heck, for audio distortion of power amps, I struggle to see what a good 19+20k imd doesn't already show. Slap a dc step over common mode range if it makes you feel better.
 
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I'm not the one proposing its utility or some kind of new insight. Burden of proof and stuff, right? Especially since I a.c. couple my gear, nor power my equipment off multiple circuits to get huge potential differences between boxes.

Heck, for audio distortion of power amps, I struggle to see what a good 19+20k imd doesn't already show. Slap a dc step over common mode range if it makes you feel better.

Hmmm. I've done it; JC did it. Its offered for you or any others to try.

THx-RNMarsh
 
And if you read the hirata paper you find it's a pulse train and some Fourier transforms, ironically showing the spectral composition of the pulse train in terms of sinusoids. Worthwhile when the kind of capture and transforms weren't as easy as now, and I need no disrespect by that. How we test electronics has moved past 1981. So what is this telling us that we don't see from looking at the spectral composition of distortion products? Or triangle waves? Sure thd is less than useful as an ensemble measure, but I'd hope we've moved past that.

I don't see what I'm missing.
 
john curl said:
However, our test equipment is LIMITED to just continuous sine waves, and can't completely represent the challenge of real music that changes in level constantly and instantly on occasion, as well as containing a number of mathematically related sine waves simultaneously appearing together.
Wow! You have a source (and cables) which can deliver infinite bandwidth. You also have amplifiers which look at the whole waveform and are clever enough to cope with its complexity, while the rest of us have to content ourselves with simply looking at the current signal value and some memory of the recent past.

Generating an asymmetrical waveform is easy: just add some second harmonic. Most systems will do it for you without you asking.
 

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I think it's more a skill in deciphering the spectrum of the output, or from the residuals of a distortion analyzer. The answers are there.

-Chris

Agree. It's about interpretation and translation into fulfilment of wanted position. At least as long as it is about carrying a waveform in a none mechanical representation. I don't believe that the current 2 channel paradigm is up to the snuff. Snuff, being able ro reproduce a live event at home. But it aint the handling of the vawe-form in terms of A/D->D/A->amplification that is the main problem - here we could still improve by not making the mistake analysing a quite gross average of the signal time-vise (typical freq. response/distorsion) but rather look at the envelop e.g. wavelet analysis.

We need to re-think the usage and number of the recording/replay electro-mechanical front ends - especially spatiality, i.e. the whole basic system rec/rep. architecture. The lack of symmetry is cumbersome. Thats where the real barriers are I believe.

//
 
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