John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier

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diyAudio Chief Moderator
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I don't think that we can talk about many occasions of quantifiable distortion when comparing state of the art circuits & parts. They mainly measure beyond reproach. The question should be about ''presentation''. Why do they present music differently to the senses of even proven engineers like John Curl (not exactly our next door gullible hobbyist)? Can we measure it via beaten path science? Seems like our guns are empty considering the presentation irregularity.
 
diyAudio Chief Moderator
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I don't want to know all the story, but you are so laconic that I am trying to understand what you meant. Hence the clarification repetitive questions. OK, one shot:
By differential tests not adequate to resolve some issues, you mean ABX subjective tests, right?
By ideal you mean textbook, not current best construction, yes?

P.S. Although you may have explained that in the past, and I may well have read it, this thread is so vast I can't be sure what you are referring to. Sometimes your answers are like short riddles. You may not answer if you are not in the mood. Cheers.
 
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Walt Jung is a great resource. I was wondering if you implied some clever new way of yours to actually measure parts that explain more about their implications on musical presentation, in some differential comparison test. You probably meant measuring against textbook ideal caps and finding 10% deviations. OK. Thanks.
 
john curl said:
We have measured significant deviations from what we would expect from a single ideal capacitor up to 10%. Is this hi fi?

John the disagreement is around an important distinction. If you remember I also objected to Walt refering to DA as "memory". Some might just think it's semantics but these things lead to some very fuzzy thinking. In fact people almost immediately likened DA to unwanted room "echos" where Pease clearly showed how to decompose a capacitor into a mesh of R's and C's. I showed that our null measurement could be used to fit Pease's model, but that got lost at the time.

YES you can find capacitors that have real harmonic distortion but in the majority of serious dielectrics it is vanishingly small.
 
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