New Linear Audio publication!

Just received my copy. Very interesting. To some extent it fills the gap left by Wireless World going off in a different direction.

The article on pentode noise raises interesting issues. It shows that in the audio range noise is dominated by 1/f, so partition noise (and shot noise) is not too important. Hence eliminating it with the "bestpentode" connection does not reduce total noise very much. The figures in the article seem to show that "bestpentode" is better than triode connection - I suspect that this is simply because the bias is slightly different. Lower current leads to lower noise.

Interestingly, I had the same idea a while ago but I never pursued it or published it so I can't claim precedence. I may have seen some whisper on the web about it somewhere. I would be surprised if nobody has thought of this before, as it is obvious to anyone who understands partition noise and has heard of the cascode.

The article does contain one minor mistake. On p49 the author says that it is obvious that the maximum improvement in noise for triode connection cannot exceed Ia/Ig2. He therefore doubts the claimed improvement of 6-14dB. If you work out the equivalent noise resistance such a large change is easily possible. This is because shot noise is heavily suppressed by the space charge, but partition noise is not suppressed at all. The reason he doesn't see such a big change in his measurements is that that are dominated by 1/f noise, which comes from a third source (i.e. neither shot or partition).
 
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Just received my copy. Very interesting. To some extent it fills the gap left by Wireless World going off in a different direction.

The article on pentode noise raises interesting issues. It shows that in the audio range noise is dominated by 1/f, so partition noise (and shot noise) is not too important. Hence eliminating it with the "bestpentode" connection does not reduce total noise very much. The figures in the article seem to show that "bestpentode" is better than triode connection - I suspect that this is simply because the bias is slightly different. Lower current leads to lower noise.

Interestingly, I had the same idea a while ago but I never pursued it or published it so I can't claim precedence. I may have seen some whisper on the web about it somewhere. I would be surprised if nobody has thought of this before, as it is obvious to anyone who understands partition noise and has heard of the cascode.

The article does contain one minor mistake. On p49 the author says that it is obvious that the maximum improvement in noise for triode connection cannot exceed Ia/Ig2. He therefore doubts the claimed improvement of 6-14dB. If you work out the equivalent noise resistance such a large change is easily possible. This is because shot noise is heavily suppressed by the space charge, but partition noise is not suppressed at all. The reason he doesn't see such a big change in his measurements is that that are dominated by 1/f noise, which comes from a third source (i.e. neither shot or partition).

... letter to the editor..? ;)

And yes, I would hope to be able to fill the void left by EW when it became a 'me too' EDN. And, trying to pick up where the AES left off 15 years ago. There's so much interesting material by very smart and knowledgeable designers that I want to document. Looking forward to your article...

jan didden
 
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OK, but I couldn't find an email address in the mag. Is it on the website?

I would like to congratulate you on an excellent first edition. One minor point: could the diagrams be a bit larger? The text on them (e.g. voltage readings) are a bit small for me!

Thank you. And yes, I'll do better on the diagrams for the next issue. I'm new to this too ;) .
There's several addresses on the website, but jan AT linearaudio DOT net gets my attention!

jan didden
 
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Linear Audio Vol 1 is alive!

Well, it's been a lot of work (again) but the 2nd issue of Linear Audio (interestingly, called Volume 1 :eek: ) is now available on my linearaudio.net website.
I am so indebted to my authors, they again provided very interesting, amazing and surprising articles. Check out the article abstracts at the site.
Let me know what you think of it!

jan didden