Masterpiece

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Give me a COMPLETE schematic of what you have today, including semiconductors by type and maker and i can help.
I am pretty sure that the noise number of ca. 0.3nV/qHz is wrong.
This is not possible with a balanced stage as far as i can tell.
Concerning regulators i get more or less the same result with shunt or series types ( in terms of sound quality ).
I prefer passive RC filtering locally anyway. Especially a very low impedance shunt is hard to stabilize.

The full schematic is already posted here.
It is built exactly as shown (except for the helper on the main current mirror).

I use BCP53/56 o the mirrors and LS 312/352 on front end.

The noise figure is referred to one side only, which means that on balance mode it will pay the penalty of 3dB increase as expected which the should be in pair to paradise, but common mode rejection is a plus of a balance topology which in the end will make it quiter overall in real life where disturbances are present everywhere.

If you really want to help then like I said I will send you a set of boards once i a done so you can measure and listen to it too.
Were you planning on bread boarding the circuit or work on the simulation side?

Tanks anyway for offering your help.
 
I forgot to mention that I had to rescale the output mirror to get proper gain, so I have 240 ohm input of the mirror and the 3 120ohm as shown on the schematic, thus output current is about 60mA to drive Riaa filter.

I don't think I have missed any specific.

Let me know if you need more info.

Thanks again.
 
That is pretty crazyyyy!!
I wonder how it compares to the vitus.
How much is it?
Is it all discreet or it is a op amp design? That makes a hug difference in terms of noise and many other factor we all know.

My goal is not strictly getting the quietest phono I the world but getting the best sounding and also very quite. If then it turns out to be the quietest I would obviously be extremely pleased.
If the simulation turns out to be real this would be extremely quite.

I can definitely say that the phono is very quite however due to the poor layout now that all wires are looping around I don't feel it is performing as it should.
Ther could also be some nasty oscillations going on that I am not capturing.

I know Joachim you ae an exit in low noise design and I know that with your help this no become an exotic phono stage.

Once PCB is design I will provide you with a set of boards.
 
Sorry, i can not see that video in my country.
The Constellation is a discrete J-Fet design by John Curl.
As far as i know they have a stash of high transconductance NOS Toshibas.
He parallels MANY of them.
You can even see a proto PCB board on the Blowtorch thread.
I think it costs around 65.000,-$ retail.
As far as i know it has a remote and a display so user interface is very advanced.
 
Sorry, i can not see that video in my country.
The Constellation is a discrete J-Fet design by John Curl.
As far as i know they have a stash of high transconductance NOS Toshibas.
He parallels MANY of them.
You can even see a proto PCB board on the Blowtorch thread.
I think it costs around 65.000,-$ retail.
As far as i know it has a remote and a display so user interface is very advanced.

so it's in pair with the Vitus phono.

What I noticed though, is that these phonos like Vitus and Boulder which are said to be true references are not champions of noise level.
Matching this with my expierence I feel like they are trying to achieve a better sound rather than focus primarely on the noise floor.
It is something that doesn't always go along i.e. good sound and extreme low noise...at least it is an extremely hard combination.
 
Noise is not allowed, PERIOD.

That is my point of view. A noisy stage for that price is simply incompetent.
I get better sound with lower noise in my system. Much better resolution of micro details plus more dynamic range.
Noise can mask some nastiness in some recordings but then the recording is bad.
It is absolutely mandatory to have a record cleaning machine, perfect combination of cartridge-arm-table, perfect adjustment with microscope and test records of meticulous quality, perfect grounding etc.
 
I agree with all you are saying except that extreme low noise would be mandatory.

I will give you 3 examples of phono I have listened to that are DEAD quite:

Trichord Reaserch Dino
Trigon Audio
Esoteric Phono

These 3 phono like I said are dead quite, nevertheless the sound is NOT good.

This to say that low level of noise is not a guarantee for good sound and in my experience when you design a phono and gets to be extremely low noise, most of the time you have compromised the good sound.
Also considering that surface noise of vinyl is considerable, the need for an extra low noise phono in practice might not be a must as it is on a CD/SACD player.
Obviously I get excited if I can conjugate good sound and low noise.

In the other end I have listened to other very expensive phono that sounded top notch and they were NOT champions of low level noise just to mention a couple

Klimo
Audio Research

(and accordingly to specs boulder and Vitus too)

This is raising kind of a flag where it tells me that good sound on a phono might not be connected to extreme low noise and I am not trying to generalize so do speak and I am sure that the two can match.
 
Yes, good sound is not ONLY connected to low noise.
I own a Trigon, i forgot the name, it´s the most expensive one with battery supply.
I am intimate familiar with the circuitry.
It sounds sterile to be polite.
I can design a circuit like that after a bottle of whisky in 10 minutes on a piece of t.... paper.
It is not even low noise how i define it.
It is an opamp based design and uses an AD797 at the input.
Actually there are also versions with LT1015 and LT1028.
Treble is passive, bass is active.
That gives it a 14dB overload margin disadvantage at 20kHz to begin with.
The AD797 manages 0.9nV/qHz at best.
That is low noise but not DEAD QUIET:
 
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oh interesting.
I call that really really quiet!! Sound like you said is sterile.

I mean just saying that in my listening experience phono that sounded stunning weren't real low noise champions while the one that were really low noise/dead quiet were not good sounding at all.

If I match that with my limited experience of phono development, tells me that most of the time when you manage one thing you loose the other i.e. when you get it super low noise your sound will suffer.

Nevertheless I am hoping for this masterpiece to finally conjugate both aspects

As I was recommended by a very respected friend of mine probably Shunt would be the best as it reqally isolates the circuit from the main source, so I think that shusn design will be pursued here.
 
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