Perhaps the "charm" of a Zen can t be beaten, but
all others caracteristics are lacking...
More seriously, this amp is not hifi...
For mid and high frequency range, this amp is definitely high-end, proved by numerous listenings and comparisons with various tube high-end designs.
This says that even a mediocre solid sate amp can
compete with tubes amps , furthemore when they are
the single ended triode versions.
But compared with a correctly designed amp, it just
can t be compared at all...
Yeah ... tell me more , where is this " amplifier "
What is a correctly designed amplifier , i have been in search for sometime now ....
Na na na na na naaaa.
Well, comparing anything with anything else is not forbidden,
of course ,it s even warmly recomended.....
To both questions, this one, with +-17V supply and 400mA
total quiescent current..
There s some slight mods to adapt the lower supply voltage,
I will publish the low power version as soon as i have some time
to mount another one, the original was "squatted" by a friend
who use it with his keyboards..
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/solid-state/155993-awb50-simple-power-amp.html
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Hello Wahab ,
Not interested in the low power version , my ears are 2 small to use 5 watts
, I need a constant voltage amplifier, PSU is 28 V +/- . Interesting to see what you have . regards,
I prefer amplifiers for ultimate fidelity to not have two current sources hooked together or have two signal paths through the amplifier. Yes these things can provide lower THD and other features but there is a down side. Two current sources looking at each other have "settling time" issues which do not show in steady state test. Multiple signal paths, as found in fully complementary amplifiers, must be joined back together again. (summed) It is virtually impossible for the two paths to have the same propagation time, bandwidth, or gain at the summing point except in IC designs. Thermal effects make this impossible in discrete designs. Again much of this will not show in any steady state test. So yes for these designs for lower THD but no on ultimate fidelity. THD less than 0.1% is usually much lower than the speaker so becomes of little importance. Transient behavior is IMHO the critical factor along with stability into any bad awful load...or even a source like a speaker driven by the other speaker.
Search the web for info about settling time if you wish to know more.
I have clipped a probes of very low capacitance 1.5pF into these fully symmetric amps and always found the signals arriving at the summing node at different times. Likewise probe inspection of the current sources has shown they take a long time to balance. Indeed these back to back current sources are IMO are the biggest source of "warm up" phenomenon. I hate them so much for ultimate fidelity that my Ultimate Fidelity amp has no current sources at all! Warm up time is under 30 seconds. Settles to 16 bits in some nano-seconds. That will never happen with discrete current sources trying to balance each other.
I know this is a bit of a lecture and many will disagree- just wanted to throw out what I have found-----Simpler is better for sound quality. My ultimate fidelity amp has 28 parts per channel less power supplies counting the diode string bias module as one part. 136 watts at 8 ohms and drives down to 3 ohms with one pair of output transistors. Always less than 0.1%THD above noise. One pair- important for ultimate.
Good luck with your design.
Search the web for info about settling time if you wish to know more.
I have clipped a probes of very low capacitance 1.5pF into these fully symmetric amps and always found the signals arriving at the summing node at different times. Likewise probe inspection of the current sources has shown they take a long time to balance. Indeed these back to back current sources are IMO are the biggest source of "warm up" phenomenon. I hate them so much for ultimate fidelity that my Ultimate Fidelity amp has no current sources at all! Warm up time is under 30 seconds. Settles to 16 bits in some nano-seconds. That will never happen with discrete current sources trying to balance each other.
I know this is a bit of a lecture and many will disagree- just wanted to throw out what I have found-----Simpler is better for sound quality. My ultimate fidelity amp has 28 parts per channel less power supplies counting the diode string bias module as one part. 136 watts at 8 ohms and drives down to 3 ohms with one pair of output transistors. Always less than 0.1%THD above noise. One pair- important for ultimate.
Good luck with your design.
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The voltage is probably too high for a low power class A amp. Unless you throw away a lot of heat.
It appears that you are quite a young person, textbooks and simple measurements still affect your mental outlook. Just think that a secret of Antonio Stradivari and his violins is not discovered yet. Many practical listenings of good systems is a basis that helps to design for people, not only for scopes and other instruments.
I had the profoundly fortunate experience of designing a "well designed" amplifier with a slightly novel architecture as my final undergraduate project.
The small signal analysis and (limited - CPU time was expensive) spice analysis showed that it worked wonderfully. It did - as a poor AM modulator :-( .
It was a particularily humbling lesson on the limits of the assumptions we make when we create theortical models. And the importance of being able to go back to first principles for analysis.
Wahab, no offence, please, if it might be cuased by my words.
I guess that novel indeed describes some period of Solzhenitsin's life in Tashkent, just after Second World War. Soviets cuased many negative things for local people, but also some positive (education, technical development). Actually, the soviet moon rover was designed and constructed in Tashkent.
Nana Nana Na Naaa
Failing to differentiate between Zen-V1 and Zen-V9 may be attributed to Dyscalculism.
If only you were right....Iwould gladly shave some 30 years
and be again a newbie filling his trash bin with blowed devices...
As for stradivarius, i did read that he often used some
old furniture to build his instruments , though i wouldn t
recomend using old style components to build an amp..
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