Discrete, long life to them.... death for integrated circuits in audio!

[destroyer X]

Several friends, along these last years, comes to me asking about chips...how to make them sound better.... well..... sadly i hate them, i hate chips.... and i have to answer things about them.

Will do no more...will point this thread, where i will say what i think about them...then people will come and read...and i will be free to be repeating my beliefs and result of experiences made along several years...there are some videos posted in youtube about.....type "destroyersoueu" there, in the youtube search bar, and you will find them.

Chip is something when one internal transistor burns, you lost the entire thing.

Chip is something misterious, you have transistors inside, and capacitors, and you cannot change them or replace them and tune them.. circuit is not correctly published, not complete.

Chip has an awfull thing, the case is small, and this was made this way to reduce costs and to make them better to be installed in micro systems.

Chip sounds very good if you know the tips and tricks to use them.... the tips and tricks are:

1) do not use full power
2) do not use high power
3) do not play loud
4) do not use 4 ohms
5) accept the thing has no power and adjust your volume very low

Why i dislike them?

That small case cannot transfer heat to heatsink..so... dissipation is a problem, the case is small, the contact area is too much small... to that case, 100 watts of dissipation is a hell optimistic...i think 80 watts may be the maximum.

Well...if you have 80 watts of dissipation (maybe if you're lucky, and if the environment is a miracle and temperature is 25 degrees celsius and heatsink does the miracle to be keept in 25 degrees celsius without warm up!)... in class AB amplifier, you cannot have more than 40 or 45 watts rms.... so...they make it this way.... 45 watts or something alike..... and if you install 4 ohms speaker..them it will give you 45 watts too...ahahahahahah!...because cannot give you more, or will overheat and melt the whole damn thing.

The chip has protections, and this kills the sound...it has over voltage protection...you install over voltage and it burns!

The chip has invertion protections....try to invert and see what happens

The chip has output short circuit protection...sometimes works.

The chip has overcurrent protection... this limits the audio dinamic... if you have a fortissimo, a peak of power, will be limited..so, will sound alike a battery portable radio from the seventies.

The chip has over voltage (output) protection...this clips the audio signal.

Well...cannot be perfect in sonics...it is not possible to be perfect this way.

If you can remove protection, them will burn...if you can do it will burn....it seems you cannot.

So.... if you can accept it was made, to operate around 5 to 10 watts to give you, unders this circunstances ,under this condition, a headroom to face some peaks..then they are fine, so good, and even better than a very good discrete.

But, will never give all that treble...and this because the distance inside the chip...the metal silicon block, are too small..so...output can be picked to input...to avoid this, the amplifier is heavily neutralized, this kills treble harmonics and sonic quality.

Also the gain condenser, is adjusted to avoid you to have deep bass..because deep bass triggers the protection circuits....so...you can increase the NFB gain condenser, that one is in series with a resistance..then you bass will be strong and you will have protection entering in action and your dinamics will be awfull.... unless you reduce your volume demand.

So.... the solution is to increase that condenser, to obtain deep bass and adjust the amplifier to low power...this way you will have headroom and nice sonics.

Accepting low power, then chips are fine, are great, lovely and have excelent sonics...depends on you.

I want distance from them.... big distance.

regards,

Carlos

[riktw]

for the power dissipation, a normal LM3886 has a junction to case resistance of 1 C/W
add isolation + cooling paste and we got 1.5 C/W
with a fairly large heatsink of 0.5C/W we got 2 C/W
if we want to keep everything below 80 degrees C we can dissipate 80 - 30(temperature in my attic atm) = 50, 2C/W means 50/ 2 = max 25 watt.
i have to agree at this point with you.
that 1C/W is mean, you have to put a couple in parallel for lotsa power.


but my little brother of 13 can build a LM3886 amplifier and make it sound good.
thats the magic of them, IC 5 euro, transformer, 13 euro each (farnell sale), casing 21 euro each, rest of the parts around 10 euro each, used some old AMD CPU coolers.
So a 1 channel amplifier was about 50 euro's
cheap as can be, nice sound, and my little bro from 13 can make it.
for high end use, nope not my piece of cake, for a decent hifi amplifier, hell yeah

[destroyer X]

was not to go repeating to my friends, always, the same stuff...so..now i just point the link.

But your ideas about are interesting and was pleasant to read.

regards,

Carlos

[qusp]

so you are not including class D as 'chips'? seems to me they can handle just a touch more than 25W

[chatziva]

Originally Posted by destroyer X

Several friends, along these last years, comes to me asking about chips...how to make them sound better.... well..... sadly i hate them, i hate chips.... and i have to answer things about them.

Will do no more...will point this thread, where i will say what i think about them...then people will come and read...and i will be free to be repeating my beliefs and result of experiences made along several years...there are some videos posted in youtube about.....type "destroyersoueu" there, in the youtube search bar, and you will find them.

Chip is something when one internal transistor burns, you lost the entire thing.

Chip is something misterious, you have transistors inside, and capacitors, and you cannot change them or replace them and tune them.. circuit is not correctly published, not complete.

Chip has an awfull thing, the case is small, and this was made this way to reduce costs and to make them better to be installed in micro systems.

Chip sounds very good if you know the tips and tricks to use them.... the tips and tricks are:

1) do not use full power
2) do not use high power
3) do not play loud
4) do not use 4 ohms
5) accept the thing has no power and adjust your volume very low

Why i dislike them?

That small case cannot transfer heat to heatsink..so... dissipation is a problem, the case is small, the contact area is too much small... to that case, 100 watts of dissipation is a hell optimistic...i think 80 watts may be the maximum.

Well...if you have 80 watts of dissipation (maybe if you're lucky, and if the environment is a miracle and temperature is 25 degrees celsius and heatsink does the miracle to be keept in 25 degrees celsius without warm up!)... in class AB amplifier, you cannot have more than 40 or 45 watts rms.... so...they make it this way.... 45 watts or something alike..... and if you install 4 ohms speaker..them it will give you 45 watts too...ahahahahahah!...because cannot give you more, or will overheat and melt the whole damn thing.

The chip has protections, and this kills the sound...it has over voltage protection...you install over voltage and it burns!

The chip has invertion protections....try to invert and see what happens

The chip has output short circuit protection...sometimes works.

The chip has overcurrent protection... this limits the audio dinamic... if you have a fortissimo, a peak of power, will be limited..so, will sound alike a battery portable radio from the seventies.

The chip has over voltage (output) protection...this clips the audio signal.

Well...cannot be perfect in sonics...it is not possible to be perfect this way.

If you can remove protection, them will burn...if you can do it will burn....it seems you cannot.

So.... if you can accept it was made, to operate around 5 to 10 watts to give you, unders this circunstances ,under this condition, a headroom to face some peaks..then they are fine, so good, and even better than a very good discrete.

But, will never give all that treble...and this because the distance inside the chip...the metal silicon block, are too small..so...output can be picked to input...to avoid this, the amplifier is heavily neutralized, this kills treble harmonics and sonic quality.

Also the gain condenser, is adjusted to avoid you to have deep bass..because deep bass triggers the protection circuits....so...you can increase the NFB gain condenser, that one is in series with a resistance..then you bass will be strong and you will have protection entering in action and your dinamics will be awfull.... unless you reduce your volume demand.

So.... the solution is to increase that condenser, to obtain deep bass and adjust the amplifier to low power...this way you will have headroom and nice sonics.

Accepting low power, then chips are fine, are great, lovely and have excelent sonics...depends on you.

I want distance from them.... big distance.

regards,

Carlos

So.... you don't like chips then?

[bogdan_borko]

Originally Posted by chatziva

So.... you don't like chips then?

nice avatar...

[nigelwright7557]

Originally Posted by qusp

so you are not including class D as 'chips'? seems to me they can handle just a touch more than 25W

Class D is a minefield for the uninitiated.
His 13 year old brother would never manage it.

[jaycee]

They have their place. They're good for beginners, and for compact cases. My LM3886 based chip amp sounds every bit as good as my Rotel RA-930AX does

Agreed though, for the best performance, discrete is superior naturally.

[john blackburn]

I bet that chip amps have brought more people to this hobby than any thing else. I started there for one.

John

[wg_ski]

Yeah... I've moved past the LM386 (no typo).