John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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Exactly so. I only bring out the test gear when it's 'close', or when the due diligence legalities are milling about.

Just rebuilt an amp with premium parts throughout, for the exercise of it. Left a few original caps in the thing. It sounded huge, spacious, highly detailed, and just a tad loose and harsh/bright. I take a closer look, and a pair of ceramics are in each zobel, back to back. Replace with one clean poly and the whole thing normalizes.

No more wall to wall sound, but it was a leverage and multiplied lie..... and slowly built up to being grating and irritating. Due to the introduced distortions in that particular important spot, harmonic structure was rung like a resonant bell and highly exaggerated. Micro detail and space were huge, but in actuality....were a complete farcical lie.

See into the recording, hear things you've never heard before! Right.......

It clearly illustrated the difference between sophomore design and high end design, and the kind of ears and minds that go with either group. You tend to see this in the audio rag test results. Bad measurements.... but the reviewer classifies the thing as being amazingly detailed.

No. Just no.

How I gave up on reality and live in my own head--by KBK
 
The one I remember was a 270uF (!) C0G cap that was about the size of a small shoebox, I believe made for the International Space Station by AVX. It may still be in service. I think they billed 100k dollars or thereabouts, back when that was a lot of money.

The AVX product is great if you needed very low ESR/ESL. I've used some of the smaller stuff, about 3/4 inch square. They were dip shaped, and it was possible to get one terminal on each side or interdigitated (IIRC).

The downside to the parts was the ease in which manual handling was able to damage the device. Small cracks on edges or corners would fail after a time. One of our vendors had bad reliability issues because the caps they used were burned in, and the worker(s) had picked them up with large tweezers during handling.

But if you needed capacitance in a highly radiation exposed environment, there were no caps that could survive other than the ceramics. Even kapton has it's limit, and that limit is quite high to begin with.

I can believe the cost. I remember screening diodes that needed visual, pics, transient thermal, x-ray, burn in, acceleration testing (during bias forward and reverse)..and many other tests. Human cost was out of the world, over 250 dollars per 400ma axial lead diode.

John
 
diyAudio Member RIP
Joined 2005
The AVX product is great if you needed very low ESR/ESL. I've used some of the smaller stuff, about 3/4 inch square. They were dip shaped, and it was possible to get one terminal on each side or interdigitated (IIRC).

The downside to the parts was the ease in which manual handling was able to damage the device. Small cracks on edges or corners would fail after a time. One of our vendors had bad reliability issues because the caps they used were burned in, and the worker(s) had picked them up with large tweezers during handling.

But if you needed capacitance in a highly radiation exposed environment, there were no caps that could survive other than the ceramics. Even kapton has it's limit, and that limit is quite high to begin with.

I can believe the cost. I remember screening diodes that needed visual, pics, transient thermal, x-ray, burn in, acceleration testing (during bias forward and reverse)..and many other tests. Human cost was out of the world, over 250 dollars per 400ma axial lead diode.

John
Yes I recall the AVX ESL was insanely low, not sure what it was.
 
I can believe the cost. I remember screening diodes that needed visual, pics, transient thermal, x-ray, burn in, acceleration testing (during bias forward and reverse)..and many other tests. Human cost was out of the world, over 250 dollars per 400ma axial lead diode.
John

I'm doing some boards that will go to the ISS and I got mild complaints that we had
spent €100K just for 100nF / 0603 capacitors. And I wanted a somewhat fast
JFET opamp and had to do it with discrete FETs and some normal opamps for
temp & offset compensation.. Trimmers simply do not exist, and normal parts may be
changed just _once_, with written reasoning and that goes through the entire hierarchy.

Radiation tests would have been cheap, but nobody was willing to do the the paperwork.
 
diyAudio Member RIP
Joined 2005
I'm doing some boards that will go to the ISS and I got mild complaints that we had
spent €100K just for 100nF / 0603 capacitors. And I wanted a somewhat fast
JFET opamp and had to do it with discrete FETs and some normal opamps for
temp & offset compensation.. Trimmers simply do not exist, and normal parts may be
changed just _once_, with written reasoning and that goes through the entire hierarchy.

Radiation tests would have been cheap, but nobody was willing to do the the paperwork.
The lament among instrumentation developers for the Hubble was that it had to launch with really old technologies, as space qualification was so slow. At least it was possible to send people up to change out packages, which will not be an option with James Webb. Meanwhile we lost Hitomi due to a software error, primarily; a true tragedy.
 
Like I said, don't be rude. Grow up.

What's new on the over-unity front.

So on 2 December 2015, or 5 months ago, Steorn posted that their their Ophone would be shipped “12 weeks from payment”, after customers paid the outrageous equivalent of AU$725. Obviously we can now see that this claim was never honoured, and I’m left wondering if those gullible punters will ever see their money again. I’m guessing not, and I’m also guessing they’ll never see their putative Ophones either
 
I find it interesting that a certain member still has his posts monitored. Which is not a good thing.

As for steorn I don't pay attention to them, I've no idea what is going on in that.

And, don't play the bully group attack game, it's childish. Such clannish gang-like comfort zone crap is very unbecoming for anyone who might consider calling themselves human.

To try and put some unsubtle form of pepper spray in a board members face, and then push/blame a 'confrontation' on them. That's rubbish.
 
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Derfnofred, KBK and I have known each other for years, but we have never worked together. Our 'stories' are real, and factual, as far as we, ourselves, know. We don't lie, or even purposely exaggerate our experiences. They are what they are. We tend to be very successful in what we try to improve in audio. That is a fact, in any case.
 
I am optimistic enough to believe your sincerity, John, but too sceptical to take your conclusions at your word. To the same end, I wouldn't trust me to give an unbiased account either. There's no person I'm better at fooling (intentional or incidentally) than myself.

The latter tends to be a characteristic of being human.
 
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Now that I fixed the primary distortion mechanism I'm on to second-order ones, including the servo cap that elicited the evil cackle from infinia,.

I'll betcha 10 to 1 you aint seen the last of your servo yet. I don't know your specs but if yer calling out special order giant SM C0Gs yer up against a few. the longer you wait for 'the phone call', the more chunks of skin off derrière will be paid.
 
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