The fourth of July is over..........
Wow!
Guy's I was only taking a subtle innocent dig at Mr.Curl (who I highly respect I might add, and has taught me a many things) and look what happens.
This thread seems to bring out the worst in people.
This is not a trollfest.
Sigh! Calm down and take a chill pill.
You are ok by me Mr.Curl even if sometimes you are...............#@$@.........and........$%##@.........and not to mention ........@#%%#.
Your biggest fan,
Jam
Wow!
Guy's I was only taking a subtle innocent dig at Mr.Curl (who I highly respect I might add, and has taught me a many things) and look what happens.
This thread seems to bring out the worst in people.
This is not a trollfest.
Sigh! Calm down and take a chill pill.
You are ok by me Mr.Curl even if sometimes you are...............#@$@.........and........$%##@.........and not to mention ........@#%%#.
Your biggest fan,
Jam
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But you have never presented one design here and yet this is a diy site so what is it that you are trying to do other than to confuse people with bits of this and bits of that ?? It's just like ideas that are written on the back of used envelopes and somehow you expect people who don't necessarily have any design skills to join up all of the dots. They may as well go and buy your finished products
regards
Trev
This is a very important point. This is a DIY site and one would expect a different kind of discussion. But we get something very different.
Unless it is done the Curl/Hansen/Loesch (CHL way) it's no good, or at best sub optimal. Nothing can be made concrete in the CHL way. Like peeling the proverbial onion, every time the 'aspiring' audio designers have the tremerity take a step forward, the CHL way reveals another layer, or another fork in the road, even more incredible (and painful) than the last. We have thus gone from 5ppm distortion -110db noise performance classified as mid fi to Myrtle blocks that, when used, make a system sound right. We don't yet know what it is that the blocks improve in the sound. We shall have to wait for the next layer to be peeled off. In the meantime, reach for the Kleenex and stay tuned.
Like someone searching for some deep philosophical truth, you can never find peace and must forever remain on the steepest part of the learning curve.
Bingo, except that is the way many things are in technology, nothing is ever perfect in the real world. Design and engineering is a set of trade offs that involve deciding what is important to You!
Different things are important to different people. If you don't agree with one way of doing things don't do it. Do it the way you think is best.
People shouldn't get threatened by different opinions or ways of doing things.
These guys are sharing what works for THEM.
You mileage May Vary, if you don't agree with what they say...No Problem do what makes you happy.
I see a lot of different viewpoints on this board, some contradict others, no problem, this is something we should enjoy.
I posted a schematic for the prototype of our first amplifier here many years ago. I don't recall anyone asking a single question about any of the circuit principles, or even a question at all.
As others have noted, enough information was given in the first Blowtorch thread to create a credible clone, and certainly to make a fairly accurate schematic (less the component values). But nobody ever asks John why he didn't use current source here or why he didn't use followers there. They just want to argue with him for reasons that elude me.
As for the rest, you are exactly correct. We are all on a journey. Peeling back the layers of the onion is the best we can hope for. There is no final destination. No day will ever come that the perfect circuit is created and all designers will use it.
Does that bother you?
I don't know why wood blocks improve the sound of my stereo. Does that bother you?
I don't know what happens to us after we die. Does that bother you?
With tens of thousands of posts, I'm sure I missed some. Actually most of them. Hopefully there was some useful information exchanged.
I've seen very little of it in this thread. But John is an optimist and still believes that some good may come of it.
The best thing I ever saw in these threads was your simulation of the quad comp-diff JFET front end. Very nice work. I can't remember if that was in the first half or the second half, but it was very much appreciated. Thank you for sharing.
Thank John. I was always a music lover. But I also loved the multidiscliminary skills that amp building and audio required. I bought all of the new gear when it came out. Then suddenly everyone was desiging audio art with ferrari colors and pricing out the real music lovers. All of the new products look to me like testaments to their egos. They run with one or two ideas, max it out and think it is genius. I wonder how much they even prototype. When I build something I have to throw out 10 seemingly good ideas to get one that really advances the sound. HOw many of these designers know when they have thrown out the baby with the bathwater with one seductive change after another. Do they know when they hear the magic. Do they know when they have lost it under layers and layers of bad choices. There is so much money thrown at audio products that doesn't necessarily translate into good sound just expensive arty looking ****.
Luxman now has a $47k amp. Sony has a $27k speaker I just heard. I make $210 a year buy I have to support a famiy of 5 in CA and my wife would justifiably shoot me if I spent $50k on a new pretty box, with seven independent power supplies, 28 noise spitting rectifiers. I go to CES every year but not much ever leaves a strong impression. I could blow away the AR anniversary premap simply by using bigger larger transformer, larger filtration caps, large musical film bypass caps. Solid core wire instead of that cheap flexible stranded stuff that everyone knows has no purity but they use anyway for greater reliability. But instead it is this incremental process, where every year they build a slightly bigger power supply, and it is slighlyt better then last years--and every year they decalare its a breakthrough product.
The Lamm amps biamping the Loehgrin speakers were awesome at CES but it was over $250,000 system. We still want to own a world classs product, we don't want a good value product, but we don't want to pay for stuff that does not translate into good sound.
So I take refuge in the DIY out of necesssity and I am thrilled with the passion of the contributors on this site. It just amazes me some of you guys are great at one thing but miss the boat on the other. It is a zen process this amp building. It has to be built with humble sincere dedication. Every step has to be listened to. An openess to a new way of looking at things.
It feels more like the good old days of the high end here like when the CES show was at the sahara. It is great to see the contributions of so many kind, great minds come toether here. Even if they argue way to much. Everyone can learn from everyone on this site.
To be honest, yes. Or maybe "bother" isn't the right word, more like "puzzle." I'm puzzled that someone would observe something like that, which seems absolutely nonsensical, then just shrug and say, "That's the way it is," rather than tease out whether or not the observation is accurate, and if so, what the root (sorry) causes are. After all, if your power supplies are not doing their job, shouldn't you figure out why they aren't and fix them?
I don't think the more advanced designers necessarily want to build clones. I consider myself fairly proficient, but certainly not near the level of some of the people, whom I have alluded to before. This does not make my designs any less worthy in my view.
When everyone accepts that there are alternative approaches to solving problems, and each has it's merits, we could possibly move forward here. Being involved commercially in audio does not necessarily make one the last word on circuit design and we have plenty examples of that through the years.
When everyone accepts that there are alternative approaches to solving problems, and each has it's merits, we could possibly move forward here. Being involved commercially in audio does not necessarily make one the last word on circuit design and we have plenty examples of that through the years.
On the wood blocks thing, no it does not bother me. I can state categorically though that I would never buy them, unless it was for ornamental reasons only. Interconnects I am prepared to spend over a cheap pair (because some of the cheap ones are truly diabolical), but that's about it. Speaker cables may sound different because of measurable parameters such as inductance, capacitance and resistance and how these physical parameters interact with the amplifier source and speaker load. So, as long as they can deliver the current, I am happy. I will not be spending any money on mains cables either, but a decent filter, or mains re-wiring is an option. I'd rather save my money and get a pair of this B&W 800 thingies. However, between those and my checkbook, my lovely wife stands, rolling pin in hand. Hell, now a pair of those in my living room would sound good!
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Well Charles, we had better do our 'homework' and fix those power supplies.
The power supply that I have that needs the most 'fixing' is my STAX Lambda Pro Headphone amp box. Heck, I can hear different power cords, chokes, and even 'Bybee devices' on the line cord. What did they do wrong? Once I solve that, then maybe I can clean up the Parasound stuff a bit, and perhaps even the CTC Blowtorch. After all, Bob made our power cords for the CTC Blowtorch. For the cost of 5 million yen in Japan, could the customer expect any less?
The power supply that I have that needs the most 'fixing' is my STAX Lambda Pro Headphone amp box. Heck, I can hear different power cords, chokes, and even 'Bybee devices' on the line cord. What did they do wrong? Once I solve that, then maybe I can clean up the Parasound stuff a bit, and perhaps even the CTC Blowtorch. After all, Bob made our power cords for the CTC Blowtorch. For the cost of 5 million yen in Japan, could the customer expect any less?
As pointed out before, the socalled operationalisation phase of a test setup is often not well documented. Most experiment are of the kind "at least one human being can (most probably) detect an audible difference" but are often later on in the discussion transformed in assertions like "human beings can hear something" or "no one is able to hear ...." .
Of course, but even carefully done controlled experiments are often biased towards "false negatives" , just due to the fact that experimenters are (especially in the audio field) more interested in avoiding false positives.
Yes, but replication of experiments is quite unusual for audio tests; the important role of the detector (aka listener) might be one reason for this
deplorable practice.
I´m glad to notice that the "positive and negative control" concept is more common now; as i introduced it in the cable thread a couple of years ago, it was called something like ridiculous.
Mentioning that it is a major part in setting up useful experiments didn´t help,
nor did citing JJ .
But, it is exactly the same what i meant; taken the "can´t control the bias" argument serious, one can not do a "simple" DBT on an effect which he believes is inaudible.
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