John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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Well Scott, I'm glad that that they gave that info out to others, like yourself. I was told to keep it mum, but that was a year ago. We already use them in some of our products. We use the D version. Ron Quan has continued in his work, but that too, is not for publication. Ron is very careful with his research.
Welcome to OUR world, Scott. Did you attend the birthday party? I wanted to, just like last year, but my ride got compromised when the Bay Bridge was closed for the weekend. It would have cost me a small fortune to get there and back, as I would have had to hire a limo.
 
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diyAudio Member RIP
Joined 2005
Actually, negative feedback has its origins from trying to achieve a goal. This goal was intelligent transmission of voice across the entire United States from coast to coast with a telephone call.

That is, electronic negative feedback (and as well feedforward). "Governors" on things like steam engines go way back see Centrifugal governor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for example.

I had a download session with a patent attorney years ago in which she took pictures of the whiteboard and recorded my dialogue as well. She had very little tech background and it was absolutely fascinating to see her come up with the same questions that people had about Black's invention for stabilizing the gain of telephony amplifiers. As well she echoed many of the dog-chasing-its-tail arguments from audiophiles.

I soldiered on for two straight hours, and at the end I was wholly depleted of neurotransmitters :eek: The invention pertained to a specific sensor for voice coil position (not integrating the output signal from an accelerometer as is frequently done). I never heard from her after that, but she showed up much later one day for another client and I asked her what had happened. Turned out she and two others had left the large firm and started up their own. "You mean they didn't get in touch with you??!" Nope. And that's just as well now. ;)


Brad Wood
 
That is, electronic negative feedback (and as well feedforward). "Governors" on things like steam engines go way back see Centrifugal governor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia for example.

I had a download session with a patent attorney years ago in which she took pictures of the whiteboard and recorded my dialogue as well. She had very little tech background and it was absolutely fascinating to see her come up with the same questions that people had about Black's invention for stabilizing the gain of telephony amplifiers. As well she echoed many of the dog-chasing-its-tail arguments from audiophiles.

I soldiered on for two straight hours, and at the end I was wholly depleted of neurotransmitters :eek: The invention pertained to a specific sensor for voice coil position (not integrating the output signal from an accelerometer as is frequently done). I never heard from her after that, but she showed up much later one day for another client and I asked her what had happened. Turned out she and two others had left the large firm and started up their own. "You mean they didn't get in touch with you??!" Nope. And that's just as well now. ;)


Brad Wood

I always felt that dual track patterned optical sensing was the way to go. The pattern and/or timing will show the position and delta quite well. Possibly three tracks, as we are talking about vibrational issues, not just a simple read. Optical should, if done correctly, give greater speed of acquisition and response/correction.

This, as ideas go, cascades into 3d microphones. Sort of. (a slightly longer path and direction) ;)

So..just exactly how...is that inner ear on humans built, again? ;)
 
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diyAudio Member RIP
Joined 2005
I always felt that dual track patterned optical sensing was the way to go. The pattern and/or timing will show the position and delta quite well. Possibly three tracks, as we are talking about vibrational issues, not just a simple read. Optical should, if done correctly, give greater speed of acquisition and response/correction.

This, as ideas go, cascades into 3d microphones. Sort of. (a slightly longer path and direction) ;)

So..just exactly how...is that inner ear on humans built, again? ;)

Optical is always appealing, indeed, although I think a lot of people imagine the wavelengths to be very small. Of course they are compared to some things, but not really all that tiny (although there are some fascinating developments in modern optics that "cheat" the hitherto-presumed limits on resolution).

The other problem is the S/N ratio of photonic detectors, which are usually power detectors, not field intensity detectors unless the light is coherent and the detector rather special (and then the issues with speckle... it gets messy). The power required to improve signal-to-noise gets high in a hurry.

Actually one of the aspects of the approach I was considering involves some rather high impedances, and I think to some extent accounts for why it hasn't been done yet that I know of. The universe of speaker transducer designers is one populated by ohms and amps. Solder in the JBL speaker lab used to be prized for its ability to cut through years of crud on parts in bins that had perhaps sat there from the days of James Bullough Lansing himself (in fact some of it found its way into another lab and was being used on amplifier prototypes, which began to exhibit some extraordinary pathologies!).

Couple this with the reluctance of speaker designers to share their turf with electronishers. I had one talented designer, upon my explanation about what I had in mind, say "I can do that just by tuning the motor structure and the suspension!" Oh yeah, really?? Well WHY HAVEN'T YOU DONE IT ALREADY??

Ludicrous.
 
I think that for short runs, balanced input is over-rated. The very NATURE of the potential noise pickup shows that it is the low Z magnetic component of the E/M wave that cannot be shielded easily. Then balanced in will pick up the magnetic component equally on both input signals and cancel it with the common mode rejection.

The problem with balanced is that you are automatically into a comparator system that is electronically realized for the most part. The minimum that can be expected is a minor distortion and noise inclusion of and into of micro signals, which is the intelligence in an audio signal. Thus the 'sound' of 'clarity' in most balanced audio gear. A canard, if there ever was one. Mediocrity trumps reasoned logic - that is inclusive of the whole. Oh yeah. I'm not supposed to talk like that......
 
The problem with balanced is that you are automatically into a comparator system that is electronically realized for the most part. The minimum that can be expected is a minor distortion and noise inclusion of and into of micro signals, which is the intelligence in an audio signal. Thus the 'sound' of 'clarity' in most balanced audio gear. A canard, if there ever was one. Mediocrity trumps reasoned logic - that is inclusive of the whole. Oh yeah. I'm not supposed to talk like that......

That really depends. If you do the entire system balanced from input to output then you actually can have less noise! Of course the even order distortion lowers as well, the limit being the match between sides.
 
The other problem is the S/N ratio of photonic detectors, which are usually power detectors, not field intensity detectors unless the light is coherent and the detector rather special (and then the issues with speckle... it gets messy). The power required to improve signal-to-noise gets high in a hurry.

pyramidic surfaces with polarization layer. Should kill most of the false positives, regarding the major jitter issues.
 
diyAudio Member RIP
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That really depends. If you do the entire system balanced from input to output then you actually can have less noise! Of course the even order distortion lowers as well, the limit being the match between sides.

Keith Johnson had a home system I had the privilege to hear that was balanced throughout, from the signal source to the voice coils, and sounded to my very-uneducated ears very good indeed (this was in the late '70's). The master tapes played back on his machine that they were recorded on were preferred to LPs, but both were very good. But, to the extent that in those days he was not too paranoid about discussing things, one of his highest-valued parameters was equality of positive and negative slew rates, and balanced tends to have this property "coming along for the ride" as it were.

I have seen audiophiles sniff at balanced and disparage push-pull, and I can only try to make my own judgments. The "harmonic structure" crowd will dislike having their even-order harmonics suppressed. Again, some weeks ago I would have said "I just want a linear time-invariant history-independent operator, not a stompbox or a tone control". But more and more I begin to be not so sure. I suppose that is healthy. :spin:
 
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Keith Johnson had a home system I had the privilege to hear that was balanced throughout, from the signal source to the voice coils, and sounded to my very-uneducated ears very good indeed (this was in the late '70's). The master tapes played back on his machine that they were recorded on were preferred to LPs, but both were very good. But, to the extent that in those days he was not too paranoid about discussing things, one of his highest-valued parameters was equality of positive and negative slew rates, and balanced tends to have this property "coming along for the ride" as it were.

I have seen audiophiles sniff at balanced and disparage push-pull, and I can only try to make my own judgments. The "harmonic structure" crowd will dislike having their even-order harmonics suppressed. Again, some weeks ago I would have said "I just want a linear time-invariant history-independent operator, not a stompbox or a tone control". But more and more I begin to be not so sure. I suppose that is healthy. :spin:

I think it is to aim for that as a potential and accept that due to the limitations of 'speed of propagation' in materials, and other associated complex and simple quantum conditionals...that some compromise of stomp box cum tone control will be the result.

Minimizing the effects of such as much as possible is in the hands of the intellect and the observational clarity of the given individual or group. And in that variant lies the plethora of audio gear we call the audio business and DIY opinions.

It was someone with association to Keith that I voiced my opinion on issues with attempting to implement balanced with...and the steps that need be considered in said implementation. That is when the comparison voiced to the few he'd ever heard speak on balanced in that way. 'The fingers of one hand' was his response, regarding the numbers of people he knew that understood that about implementing balanced audio - Keith being one of those people.
 
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I am equally comfortable with balanced and unbalanced. My CTC Blowtorch is used by me as single ended in, and balanced out. Works just fine, 0.4nv/rt Hz noise on the phono, etc.
My latest incarnations are going to be balanced in and they take 4 times as many low noise input parts to get the same noise as unbalanced. Is it worth it? We will see.
 
There is nothing exceptional about either balanced or unbalanced. Sometimes balanced is helpful to remove hum pickup from external sources like transformers, and sometimes balanced makes extremely low noise design difficult and near impossible, unless you use an input transformer.

I've had my ideas on audio transformer core design for quite some time. Some new things have popped up, like various powdered core designs..but more can be done. It took some time to come to the understanding of where the real 'action' was, so to speak..thus...I never really bother 'interviewing' the situations on the LCR or electrical theory levels, after a certain point in time, in development of thinking and experimenting. I address it on the quantum levels, which is where the complex electrical parameters arise from. Go to the source, go directly to the source....
 
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