latly i have been doing alot of liquid cooling on computers, and i had the idea to liquid cool my audio equipment.
i was thinking since i have all my amplifiers in a little stand thing and it can get hot in there, so i was thinking of running all my equipment off one water loop and dissipate the heat somewhere else outside the stand.
I used to run the water outside a window with a radiator and a fan, kept all the heat and noise from fans outside, maby i can do that with the amplifiers?, would temps like -15, harm the output transistors if it was all insulated to prevent condensation. it was just a random idea i had. didn't want to try without asking if someone may know about this, because i don't want to find out the hard way, that transistor don't function properly below 5-10 degrees, so pleas any idea's or information would be awsome. thx
i was thinking since i have all my amplifiers in a little stand thing and it can get hot in there, so i was thinking of running all my equipment off one water loop and dissipate the heat somewhere else outside the stand.
I used to run the water outside a window with a radiator and a fan, kept all the heat and noise from fans outside, maby i can do that with the amplifiers?, would temps like -15, harm the output transistors if it was all insulated to prevent condensation. it was just a random idea i had. didn't want to try without asking if someone may know about this, because i don't want to find out the hard way, that transistor don't function properly below 5-10 degrees, so pleas any idea's or information would be awsome. thx
Transistors don't much mind heat, up to a point, but excessive heat can kill other components before their time, especially electrolytic capacitors. Anything within reason you can do to keep your system components at room temperature will help, but don't go overboard. Corrosion from condensation can do a lot of damage in places you won't see.
What's the problem you're trying to solve? I doubt your amps are overheating and silicon devices can work at quite high temperatures without problems. Pump, flow and fan noise aren't going to enhance your listening much 
That said, transfer characteristics of transistors are temperature sensitive and you may find an optimum temp for maximum linearity that an active cooling system could help maintain. You should be able to get that from the transistor's datasheets.
Niro what's-his-name who founded Nakamichi back in the day has made a couple of amps I believe with crazy heatsinking to ensure maximum thermal stability. But perhaps he did that to allow the use of some otherwise non-conventional transistor...
Back to cooling your equipment cabinet, a low-RPM fan or even a decent convection layout could help move heat out at low cost and complexity.
That said, transfer characteristics of transistors are temperature sensitive and you may find an optimum temp for maximum linearity that an active cooling system could help maintain. You should be able to get that from the transistor's datasheets.
Niro what's-his-name who founded Nakamichi back in the day has made a couple of amps I believe with crazy heatsinking to ensure maximum thermal stability. But perhaps he did that to allow the use of some otherwise non-conventional transistor...
Back to cooling your equipment cabinet, a low-RPM fan or even a decent convection layout could help move heat out at low cost and complexity.
I just noticed this. I think he's talking about using a peltier/TEC cooling device. They can produce subzero temperatures...
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The colder you make one side, the hotter the other get's, plus the more current it needs. I played with some a few years ago, they are cool
they now use them in outdoor coolers that plug into 12V, they also drain your battery pretty fast too One would think it would be easier to just buy a heat sink and strap a very efficient clean quiet ball bearing fan to it to keep air flowing over it
j'
Hey, thank you everyone for ur reply's, the idea of this cooling system just came into my head one day, because i do alot of overclocking on my computer, so i have a thing for keeping my electronics as cool as i can, because, i have learned how much electronics don't like Heat. Now i understanding that output transistor's have a "sweet spot" temperature, affecting the performance?. i understand the effect of condesation from the sub zero temp's, i learned the hard way, when i was o'cing my comp with winter temp's, i was told to insulat everything, BUT i didn't and it only took a few min for some massive water droplet to form, and rip on my video card, so i learned insualtion isn't something to be skipped with zub zero. most of this cooling system idea is because i like to have somethign different, LOL, and i figured i would cool all my amps with one rad and fan set up, and in the summer, its get really hot, and just from y amps heating up from pounding some beat's it makes a noticable difference, so i was thinking of trasporting the heat somewhere else, and use t to help keep, optimum running temp's, i think im goin to download the data sheets for all my output trasistors, and check out the temps. so plz anything else would be great,
The characteristics of CPU semiconductors that give better performance at low temperatures do *not* apply to audio equipment. Amplifiers etc are designed to perform best at room temperature or slightly above.
There's also a commonly held belief that amplifiers sound better after they've warmed up. So if you design your cooling system to maiintain the amps at about 30 degrees C, you may get better sound and it will still be cool enough to give long life to the components. (Transistors might work OK at high temperatures, but many capacitors will have their life reduced by running at high temperatures.)
There's also a commonly held belief that amplifiers sound better after they've warmed up. So if you design your cooling system to maiintain the amps at about 30 degrees C, you may get better sound and it will still be cool enough to give long life to the components. (Transistors might work OK at high temperatures, but many capacitors will have their life reduced by running at high temperatures.)
I'm speculating. Transfer characteristics can change with temperature, which implies that there might be an optimum temperature. Niro's amp (the model number/name of which I cannot remember now) used gigantic heatsinks but I believe he was aiming for thermal stability more than anything... As I say, you'd have to grab the datasheets and look at the transfer characteristic (if that info is given).
You could use a TEC that mirrored the bias current, possibly also tracking the input signal (like Krell's auto-biasing does...). But whether it's sonically worth it I wouldn't care to say, as I don't believe in golden ears - just hard science
Thermal noise decreases at lower temperatures for all semiconductors. If you cool a solid state amplifier to low temperatures and tune it to work best at that temperature, it will perform better than if you chose a higher operating temperature to tune for.
In some test equipment that need extremely low noise amplifiers, it is common practice to use Peltiers to keep them cool. The actual amplifiers are sealed in metal and epoxy to keep out noise and moisture.
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Slightly OT but ...
I think water-cooling for speakers makes more sense.
With pro-sound bass-bins (and some people's sub's), you have a few hundred watts of dissipated heat trapped in a wood box.
In addition to longevity, you'd get increased max spl due to less thermal compression.
thats why lots of bass bins are vented and their drivers have HUGE voice coil vents, A to prevent noise B to keep the vc cool. Water cooling a driver would make NO Sense at all.
... despite which they suffer compression when driven hard, due to increased voice-coil impedance caused by the heat.
p.s. PiSpeakers Forum - Woofer cooling device - Destructive test - Wayne Parham, August 24, 2005 at 17:10:58
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One should try this with cooling amps and see if sound goes oily!
Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil : Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil? - Review Tom's Hardware
Strip Out The Fans, Add 8 Gallons of Cooking Oil : Dousing Your Athlon FX-55 With Eight Gallons Of Cooking Oil? - Review Tom's Hardware
I would think if it's minus 15 deg. outside, you'd want to KEEP all the heat you could inside...
I have considered water cooling a class A amp project by re-purposing baseboard hydronic units to work in a vertical loop with only a thermosiphon to provide circulation. but I mainly wanted to do it to reduce the overall size of the amps footprint, and 'cuz I thought it would look kewl.
John
I have considered water cooling a class A amp project by re-purposing baseboard hydronic units to work in a vertical loop with only a thermosiphon to provide circulation. but I mainly wanted to do it to reduce the overall size of the amps footprint, and 'cuz I thought it would look kewl.
John
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