Christophe,
You are so correct about paranoia and mercury. Here in the States we are constantly told to change all of our light bulbs to florescent types and those are full of mercury. I know that most people are going to just dump most of those in the trash when they burned out. Nobody is saying to collect mercury and play with it, I knew that years ago when my father told me that in his lab. Nobody wants to play with things that are going to poison themselves, goes without saying, but how many other compounds are used in electrical devices during their manufacture and if one of them perhaps catches fire? A little common sense goes a long way if you can use it.....
You are so correct about paranoia and mercury. Here in the States we are constantly told to change all of our light bulbs to florescent types and those are full of mercury. I know that most people are going to just dump most of those in the trash when they burned out. Nobody is saying to collect mercury and play with it, I knew that years ago when my father told me that in his lab. Nobody wants to play with things that are going to poison themselves, goes without saying, but how many other compounds are used in electrical devices during their manufacture and if one of them perhaps catches fire? A little common sense goes a long way if you can use it.....
I believe i have less than you. So, can-you share your ? I am less interested to know how much you are experienced than to learn from the content of this expertise.
You present yourself as a teacher, and, when we ask a technical question, your answer is near always "I know the answer".
Last edited:
We just copy-you with some years of delay. Mostly on the stupidest things.
We suffer the same with those horrible energy saving neons bulbs, and smokers treated as criminals.
The main difference between our two countries is, in France, we still have the right to smile at girls ad women, and they, to smile in return. It will not last
John, with all my respect, it is boring. we don't care what you do, we care *why*.
Last edited:
I can't listen to a system that uses conventional switching and connection mechanisms for more than a short period of time ... well over 25 years I realised the damage that was done to SQ by this, and the distortion artifacts from this now scream at me, unless the system is so clean in every other area that it, just, gets away with it ...
Which is why I find it peculiar that people need days, or weeks, to perceive the quality of a system. For me it is instantaneous, either a system has "it", or it hasn't. And when it works, issues like sibilance, etc, are completely irrelevant, I haven't needed to use that term for decades ...
Frank
Why such an aggressive and paranoid response ?
I asked-you why, it was sincere, i did not attack-you.
What is better on your experience ? Distortion ? Noise ? HF leakage when open state? What ?
What is the impedance of the following stage, when you feel something bad in static relays ?
Did-you try bridged, or parallel relays if you are in concern with the little non linear impedance ?
Long time behavior comparison ?
Why don't you like DIP ? Humid mercurial relays ?
Can't we talk technically, just for once ?
If i said, "i use OPAs" did it bring-you any information ? That is what you do.
On my side, i have tried to explain why, how, and in what context i use OPAs, and witch ones, so, if you are interested, you can try without loosing time and make your own opinion.
Last edited:
John, back then I went down the typical route of trying Cramolin, Tweek, etc; they seemed to give some temporary relief but ended up being worse than the disease. I resorted to constant cleaning, just using ethanol, taking extreme care in how I went through the business of applying and then drying off this cleaner; and this was one of the best methods. One thing I learnt was that occasional reseating of a connection only made the contact then deteriorate even faster; the only solution next was to go through a complete cleaning ritual for that joint.
So, my options were limited: soldering obviously worked for the other 99% of the connections, so that was the simple solution. Every connection was hardwired and this brought a great deal of relief. It doesn't solve the input selection and volume problem, so the simple technique used was to eliminate the preamp entirely: single source only and a CD player that used, for the time, an advanced digital volume control.
An experiment at one time through the years using the PGA2310, driven by very simple discrete logic circuitry, no processor used at all, showed me that this technique worked well, eliminated the type of problem I was sensitive to. But haven't used it otherwise.
The current cheap HT unit, heavily tweaked with everything soldered, has pretty basic all-in-one silicon chips for source selection, and volume stepping. These work well enough to not have this poor contact issue; better quality units I'm sure would improve the sound in other areas but at least it doesn't suffer this type of distortion.
Have never tried relays, but if I needed to I would favour mercury wetted units, if I could buy them. The key issue seems to be achieving true gas-tightness at the actual junctions, so as to not have a problem ...
Frank
So, my options were limited: soldering obviously worked for the other 99% of the connections, so that was the simple solution. Every connection was hardwired and this brought a great deal of relief. It doesn't solve the input selection and volume problem, so the simple technique used was to eliminate the preamp entirely: single source only and a CD player that used, for the time, an advanced digital volume control.
An experiment at one time through the years using the PGA2310, driven by very simple discrete logic circuitry, no processor used at all, showed me that this technique worked well, eliminated the type of problem I was sensitive to. But haven't used it otherwise.
The current cheap HT unit, heavily tweaked with everything soldered, has pretty basic all-in-one silicon chips for source selection, and volume stepping. These work well enough to not have this poor contact issue; better quality units I'm sure would improve the sound in other areas but at least it doesn't suffer this type of distortion.
Have never tried relays, but if I needed to I would favour mercury wetted units, if I could buy them. The key issue seems to be achieving true gas-tightness at the actual junctions, so as to not have a problem ...
Frank
I need to know what you want. If you are happy with solid state switching, don't think that I am not surprised, but I want the best that can be done, and solid state switching just does not 'cut it' as that absolute best. In fact, relays are not perfect either. ONLY silver on silver self cleaning switches make the grade with me, so far. That is a PERSONAL OPINION, and I cannot show it in measurements. If I could, audio design would be so much simpler. '-)
John, what I achieve by going to these "extreme" measures is the ability to play so-called bad recordings at high, or natural, volumes with complete comfort, and pleasure. The degradation in SQ caused by the problems I refer to is particularly obnoxious with these, makes difficult recordings completely unlistenable to otherwise ...
People sometimes comment how remarkably good simple and unambitious all-in-one items like kitchen radios sound at times: this is another example of this in action -- reducing complexity eliminates a lot of the gremlin inducing issues ...
Frank
People sometimes comment how remarkably good simple and unambitious all-in-one items like kitchen radios sound at times: this is another example of this in action -- reducing complexity eliminates a lot of the gremlin inducing issues ...
Frank
Last edited:
Ok, John, you win. Communication with you is impossible.
I was full of respect for you, when i arrived on this thread. Now, i'm just crossed against you.
I feel-you like a black stubborn wall, smelling components, and if you don't like something for any reason you do not care to describe, it's over, without any reflexion or analyze, any consideration of the context.
And all the others engineers around-you are just clowns comparing to you because you are THE BEST !.
Do not count on me to be part of your court of ignorant admirers.
You find that people lack of kindness towards you? You're the only culprit.
For the others, if the reason of not using static relays is the *very little* distortion they induce, (May-be the reason why Mr. John "the great" Curl don't use them any more, who knows ?) why not try to cancel-it ?
Z is the impedance of the next input stage. Use the same Z in the feedback loop of this stage and add the same static relay in serial with it, always in "on" state.
I was full of respect for you, when i arrived on this thread. Now, i'm just crossed against you.
I feel-you like a black stubborn wall, smelling components, and if you don't like something for any reason you do not care to describe, it's over, without any reflexion or analyze, any consideration of the context.
And all the others engineers around-you are just clowns comparing to you because you are THE BEST !.
Do not count on me to be part of your court of ignorant admirers.
You find that people lack of kindness towards you? You're the only culprit.
For the others, if the reason of not using static relays is the *very little* distortion they induce, (May-be the reason why Mr. John "the great" Curl don't use them any more, who knows ?) why not try to cancel-it ?
Z is the impedance of the next input stage. Use the same Z in the feedback loop of this stage and add the same static relay in serial with it, always in "on" state.
Last edited:
Because, the type of distortion they introduce is extremely non-linear; it may be low level, but it's highly obnoxious in its effects -- it's just not cancellable.
Next time you listen to a "lousy' recording, and it really sounds lousy(!), that just may be the reason why ...
Frank
Is-it what said your distortiometer ?
Ah, sorry, i forgot, measurement instruments does not mean nothing !
As you hear i'm deaf ?
I don't evaluate for lousy or not, i measure and compare (listen) the influence of any new device i try to implement. You are the audiophile. I'm just an engineer.
Last edited:
The distortiometer is my ears, they're pretty good with this type of distortion ... linear distortion, completely hopeless, I wouldn't have a clue about the humps and bumps - that's where a "real" instrument comes out ...
The other problem is that this type of distortion doesn't like to play ball, it won't sit nicely in a test bench environment and give a beautiful consistent reading, no matter what the other circumstances are. Like mercury, in fact ...
Like speaker driver distortion readings: I have never seen anywhere whether the distortion varies depending on the ambient temperature, humidity, how much the unit is run in, the time since cold start for the day, the level of signal input from softest through normal listening level. Are these factors just assumed to be irrelevant, so long as some numbers can be extracted, under some circumstances, that this then tells you everything you need to know,
...Frank
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.