John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

[morinix]

Audio design is like taking a trip. All the fun is in the travel to the destination not the destination itself. If JC gave full plans to build a Blowtorch then there would be no travel just destination.

Sycophantic enough for you MR Wood?

[morinix]

Personally I think the power supply JC used on the Blowtorch is more than half of the secret. Yet everyone keeps hounding JC for the amplifier topology.

[zman01]

Originally Posted by john curl

My test procedure is LONG TERM LISTENING TESTS.

Originally Posted by Joshua_G

This is also my way of evaluating sound quality, as I elaborated above.
Quite a few times I tried a piece of gear on my setup that sounded good at first, but after a while, after few listening sessions on consecutive days, some flaws in the sound quality emerged.

+1. I also find it difficult to make quality subjective judgements based on short sessions.

[Joshua_G]

Originally Posted by morinix

Personally I think the power supply JC used on the Blowtorch is more than half of the secret. Yet everyone keeps hounding JC for the amplifier topology.

In high quality, or SOTA, audio gear, everything counts.
The same goes for setting up high quality, or very 'musical', audio setup – everything count. It can be known only by experimenting, by trying various options.
It looks to me unwise to spend a lot of money on the gear itself and no money at all on electricity treatment to the setup, or acoustic treatment, or vibration absorption and so on.

[QSerraTico_Tico]

Originally Posted by morinix

Personally I think the power supply JC used on the Blowtorch is more than half of the secret. Yet everyone keeps hounding JC for the amplifier topology.

Wrong, it's bad and hampers dynamics.

[bcarso]

Originally Posted by morinix

Audio design is like taking a trip. All the fun is in the travel to the destination not the destination itself. If JC gave full plans to build a Blowtorch then there would be no travel just destination.

Sycophantic enough for you MR Wood?

I didn't find that the least bit sycophantic Robert.

[Wavebourn]

Originally Posted by Joshua_G

Hi John,
I haven't heard any good audio product from any of your critics.

Really? Do you mean everything that you heard with AD chips inside was not good, including records that were made using designed by Scott Wurcer ICs?

[Joshua_G]

Originally Posted by Wavebourn

Really? Do you mean everything that you heard with AD chips inside was not good, including records that were made using designed by Scott Wurcer ICs?

I referred to the gear I have at home, or playback gear I heard in various places. I have no idea what gear was used in the recording/mixing/mastering.

[morinix]

Originally Posted by bcarso

I didn't find that the least bit sycophantic Robert.

[rcw666]

Anybody who claims that they can hear a pre amp looses me instantly.
The only pre amp I have ever heard was one that featured a 47k resistor directly in series with the phono input, and very poor psrr, so it both hissed and hummed.

I remember an audio pundit popular at the time saying that if you, "listened through", the hiss you could hear the superior quality of the design.
I being a simple sort of a person, asked why should one do that? why just not have them there in the first place.

Another pre amp did have hiss that was caused by a Zener used in the power supply. Replacing the Zener with a led referenced two transistor regulator fixed that.
Since then I have built several pre amps, and using the simple rule not to put high value resistors in series with the signal and to use a quiet power supply and a circuit with good psrr I haven't heard the difference in one since.
rcw