Re: About the Ultrapath
I hope I didn't come across as saying that. In fact, I don't use one, at least not as a preamp. My power amps are DRD and use an Ultra-path topology for the output. However, I have played with the topology enough to think it is good enough to pass the “Ultra-waste-of-time” bar.
tomsyl said:
I hope I didn't come across as saying that. In fact, I don't use one, at least not as a preamp. My power amps are DRD and use an Ultra-path topology for the output. However, I have played with the topology enough to think it is good enough to pass the “Ultra-waste-of-time” bar.
My tuppence ha'penny.
JB has provided a wonderful site for nearly a decade. He's done this basically for free (with some good software sales and PCBs to support it) but the value to the tube using community is immense. I must have given 200 people with an interest in tube the link to the grounded cathode article which is one of the best written ever. John's style is good, his writing light and easy to read, produces great diagrams to back up the text and it goes to show how circuits work and even the variants that don't. And why. He doesn't jump on fads and comes up with great informative articles that look at topologies that many of use would not have thought up on our own, or if we did, would probably not have followed through to that extent.
I think more has been done to expand the understanding and knowledge of tube circuitry in modern times by John Broskie and Morgan Jones that anyone else. Fine, solid engineering communicated easily and well. You can't ask for more than that.
I dips me lid.
JB has provided a wonderful site for nearly a decade. He's done this basically for free (with some good software sales and PCBs to support it) but the value to the tube using community is immense. I must have given 200 people with an interest in tube the link to the grounded cathode article which is one of the best written ever. John's style is good, his writing light and easy to read, produces great diagrams to back up the text and it goes to show how circuits work and even the variants that don't. And why. He doesn't jump on fads and comes up with great informative articles that look at topologies that many of use would not have thought up on our own, or if we did, would probably not have followed through to that extent.
I think more has been done to expand the understanding and knowledge of tube circuitry in modern times by John Broskie and Morgan Jones that anyone else. Fine, solid engineering communicated easily and well. You can't ask for more than that.
I dips me lid.
A couple of things:
dsavitsk, those were just my comments, based in large part on those made by Jack Elliano in the original Vacuum Tube Valley article where he laid out the design. It sounds like you are using some of his concepts with your DRD-based amp. Any chance of getting a peek at the schematic, and an estimate from you of power output? (I know some of Jack's designs really increase Po over more traditional circuits.) TIA.
Brett, I agree word-for-word with your comments on TubeCad. Look at the detailed discussion right in this thread about whether Broskie has correctly modeled the ultrapath circuit; one mention of him and the engineering types are off to the races. Whether he's right or not, John B. has a way of promoting thought and talk in new directions, away from the traditional circuits we've been seeing iterations of for decades. And we're getting it for free . . .
If you like Morgan Jones and are willing to look at solid state, even jus from a conceptual standpoint, I highly recommend Ben Duncan's "Audio Power Amplifiers", which does the same thing from an SS standpoint. I doubt I'll build any of his circuits, but I learned a tremendous amount from reading about them in the detail and theory he provides in the book.
dsavitsk, those were just my comments, based in large part on those made by Jack Elliano in the original Vacuum Tube Valley article where he laid out the design. It sounds like you are using some of his concepts with your DRD-based amp. Any chance of getting a peek at the schematic, and an estimate from you of power output? (I know some of Jack's designs really increase Po over more traditional circuits.) TIA.
Brett, I agree word-for-word with your comments on TubeCad. Look at the detailed discussion right in this thread about whether Broskie has correctly modeled the ultrapath circuit; one mention of him and the engineering types are off to the races. Whether he's right or not, John B. has a way of promoting thought and talk in new directions, away from the traditional circuits we've been seeing iterations of for decades. And we're getting it for free . . .
If you like Morgan Jones and are willing to look at solid state, even jus from a conceptual standpoint, I highly recommend Ben Duncan's "Audio Power Amplifiers", which does the same thing from an SS standpoint. I doubt I'll build any of his circuits, but I learned a tremendous amount from reading about them in the detail and theory he provides in the book.
Attachments
He has said several times in his blog that he can't possibly reply to all emails due to volume.jduffy said:I like his blog but he never replied to several emails I sent asking some relevant questions regarding the Aikido. No loss. I just went out and built another design and I'm happy with it.
Life happens.
I know from experience that it is impossible to answer all the email that I get. I have a full time engineering job that often keeps me at work until late evening. On an average day I get 5 to 10 real emails. Some days I get 20+. I give priority to email from people who have purchased my boards. Often this is a full time job, so some other email doesn't get answered. I am sure that Broskie is in a similar situation.
I have received a reply on all of my questions related to his software. Sometimes it took a while, and I haven't asked anything recently. Make sure that there is an obvious reference to a software question in the email title. When your email box gets filled with spam regularly, it is easy to delete the wrong email.
I read Broskies site regularly and find it an interesting source of information. I have even bought his boards and attenuator kits even though I haven't had the time to build them. I bought most of his software too. All of the information on his site takes time to develop, organize, and post. Trust me, running a "semi - free" tube web site takes a lot more time than you can imagine and selling PC boards or software doesn't even come close to paying the bills.
Some other "free information" tube web sites have gone away, or haven't been updated in years. This one has been a source of "voluntary user supported" information for years. It is not possible for all of the information to be interesting to all of the readers all of the time. Don't complain too loud though, I know that I have come close to pulling the plug on my site a couple of times. JB may be in the same place.
@ #52
Hi,
I am using www.blogger.com
for my free information tube blogs.
You can leave comments there.
I have to erase some spam, but I think the comments
option is a nice and helpful blogger feature.
Kind regards,
Darius
Hi,
I am using www.blogger.com
for my free information tube blogs.
You can leave comments there.
I have to erase some spam, but I think the comments
option is a nice and helpful blogger feature.
Kind regards,
Darius
I think that our friend Leadbelly may be lamenting a little too hard. Life moves on, our skills grow and develop. I am a newby regarding most of the audio electronics stuff and I find JB's site to be great. Most of the stuff he writes about is way over my head (Good for you if you think it is below you).
Tubelab has definitely hit the points well.
I think we should be applauding JB for his wonderful contribution to the DIY hobby. Be thankful he is doing it.
Nuff said, leave it alone
Tubelab has definitely hit the points well.
I think we should be applauding JB for his wonderful contribution to the DIY hobby. Be thankful he is doing it.
Nuff said, leave it alone
Steve Bench's vacuum tube related web site has not been updated in a long while. It has been hosted on AOL. I followed a link to his site yesterday to see a banner message proclaiming that the AOL free pages are going away, likely resulting in the loss of this valuable resource. Copy what you can while you can.
tubelab.com said:
wget.exe -mr http://members.aol.com/sbench101/
wget for win32: http://users.ugent.be/~bpuype/wget/
lwp-rget in UNIX/mac OS-X shows some promise but I have run into glitches with it. It is supposed to change the references to point to the local copies of files and at least in this case it did not. It may have to do with using java or something like that to go to the links rather than standard HTML. Also some files that should have come down as an image (e.g. gif) were treated like HTML text.
Any lwp experts out there care to comment. I was able to manually get most files that I wanted but had hoped to find a better way. The safari and firefox save/archive commands don't seem to cut it either.
Any lwp experts out there care to comment. I was able to manually get most files that I wanted but had hoped to find a better way. The safari and firefox save/archive commands don't seem to cut it either.
I emailed Steve Bench at the beginning of the week when I outed the impending demise of his site on another thread. So far I have not heard back from him so I must assume he is no longer paying much attention to this..
I would recommend anyone who appreciates the material on this site grab what they are interested in now.
Incidentally it is not too cool to rehost this material somewhere else without the original owner's permission, so until SB weighs in on this I wouldn't.. I can't imagine he would have any particular issue with it, but that is his decision to make not ours.
I would recommend anyone who appreciates the material on this site grab what they are interested in now.
Incidentally it is not too cool to rehost this material somewhere else without the original owner's permission, so until SB weighs in on this I wouldn't.. I can't imagine he would have any particular issue with it, but that is his decision to make not ours.
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