abraxalito

I didn't much care for the sound of my active elliptic filter - great dynamics in the bass for sure but the upper-end colourations were a bit unnatural sounding. So I've shelved tthat one for now and instead I'm playing with a simplified (by which I mean fewer inductors) passive elliptic.

There are two topologies for building elliptics where the zeroes are realized either by shunt series-LC networks or series paralleled-LC networks. The series created zeroes means fewer inductors are called for. In its most basic, unbalanced form there would be just three inductors for a 7th order filter. This filter though is balanced and designed to feed my Nitro desktop amp directly, without any I/V amplifier stage.

I'm a recent convert of the lowest possible impedance of power supply based on my experience of adding caps to my chipamp. So I figure the signal stages can't be harmed by reducing their supply impedance either, particularly at LF.

I note there are a few aftermarket regulators around - I had a look at Paul Hynes and Belleson in the past few days. They're a bit pricey for my tastes, given the cost of the components they're using can't be over single digit $ so I've had a look at "doing it at home, only cheaper".

First off, a simple TL431 is about the best bang for the buck achievable, as the part here is 0.2rmb. But the dynamic impedance is typically 0.2ohms and I was hoping and aiming to go a bit lower than this - perhaps an order of magnitude lower, to around 10mohms. Lower than this and the resistance of the PCB tracks come into play and its also very hard to maintain such a low impedance beyond the audio band as cap ESRs (for the best ones) are of...

Here's the first channel under construction on 2mm pitch double-sided proto board. The opamps in this instance are AD8014 in SOT23-5 packages, hence the choice of the 2mm pitch board. Power supplies will go on another board to be attached to the reverse side.

Passive filters rock for SQ, no doubt about it but I'm still curious how good sounding an active DAC I/V post filter might be. So I've figured out an almost equivalent FR active version of my 7th order LC elliptic filter. This active elliptic has been designed using LTSpice's FilterCad program giving the pole/zero positions, then the Williams handbook of filter design helped me translate those numbers into a working circuit. Its using what Williams calls the VCVS 2nd order section based on a twin-T network to realize the zeroes.

My first attempt at an active elliptic filter was using gyrators but that proved very hard (practically impossible) to get stable with CFB opamps due to their HF gain peaking. VFB opamps I ruled out at the start for inadequate SQ - its not hard to make gyrators stable with them. Hence this approach which promises to work with CFBs though I'd guess I'll probably need to add series Rs between the stages in practice. Nothing built yet but thought I'd...

Fascinating discussion going on about the nature of 'dynamics' over on this thread : http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi...nger-what.html

Pano writes (post 1174):

There is a consistency across several decades and cultures that high efficiency speakers sound more dynamic than low efficiency. That's a common subjective assessment, so we might ask "why?"

I'm not going to chip in on that thread because I have bigger fish to fry, but ISTM they're all barking up the wrong tree. That's because the question itself isn't quite posed correctly even though its a great start. Nobody listens to speakers alone, they're always powered by amplifiers. The answer to dynamics lies in amplifiers, not speakers. Put another way 'Its the electronics, stupid!'.

Higher efficiency speakers tax amplifiers (here meaning their power supplies in the main) much less - so there's no way to do an apples-apples comparison...