Truth be told, for a self-biased jfet audio circuit like the CrystalFET the main reason we need to used matched jfets is to ensure that the signal gain is the same in both channels. The operating point of the amplifier stage (the voltages and currents) can be allowed to vary a little so long as the transconductance, g_m is the same, as this is directly proportional to the open loop voltage gain, A, as

A = g_m R_l (transconductance x load resistance)

Now, yes, ideally you would find two jfets with identical saturation current and pinch off voltages, ensuring not just the same gain but also the same operating point. In practice though you are usually binning parts that are close to each other based on some reference parameter like the pinch off voltage (V_gs0) that you hope closely correlates with the signal gain. This is not quite as good though as the calculating the actual transconductance of the particular device in the circuit it is to be used in. And since...

Seems I got a bit carried away with listening to my heavily modded XuanZu amp in the last-to-one blog post. I even considered it was superior to my current headphones - that would mean shelling out on some new ones. Before I went shopping though I did try it into my DT880s, which are 600ohms (hence I usually only use them for special occasions) - they sounded cleaner, although considerably quieter. This amp doesn't have enough voltage swing available to deliver the SPLs into such a high impedance. So was the cleanliness of these phones due to their being higher quality (they're at least 4* the cost of the others)? Or just because of listening at a lower level?

When my over-enthuasiasm for the amp had subsided a bit I decided to consider a way to answer these questions. If the amp was indeed not producing the artifacts which I was hearing on piano into the low-Z cans, then putting a 2:1 step-down transformer on its output would make no difference at all. The amp has plenty...

I was going to write a post praising this player for the superb value for money (its the only cheap single-chip FLAC player I've found) but this morning it produced an alarming series of whistles and pops from what I presume is a corrupt file on my TFcard. So now its only recommended if you're sure you have perfect data on your card - it doesn't seem to mute the audio when an error is found.

Apart from this major howler at just 30rmb its great, providing as it does FLAC, WAV and mp3 support along with Bluetooth running from a USB power source at 5V. The audio performance is decent when run through my modified XuanZu headamp as preamp - the level is rather low otherwise and I suspect it needs a high-impedance buffer for best dynamics.

I put the TFcard which gave the player hiccups into my PC reader and uploaded the 'problem' file to Audacity. No glitches noticed there so looks like I might have to dig a bit deeper to find out what went wrong. I shall try playing...

I am so tired of hearing that anyone who listens to SET amplifiers "Must like distortion".

It must be comforting to be that simple.

The reality of the situation is a single ended tube amplifier is a very specific solution to a very specific problem.

The topology results in an implementation that has vanishingly low distortion at very low power levels.

This is a direct result of three factors,
Low distortion of the audio triodes used, the lack of multiple devices and the avoidance of the non-linear magnetic behavior around zero crossing.

FWIW, this only works in the tube world for very low power on very efficient speakers.

I still have memories of listening to a Klipsch horn with a Phase Linear 400. I could not stay in the room at any power level. It was near class B and arguably the worst amplifier ever made. Still, it took an efficient speaker to highlight its faults.
...

with only two resistors, a 9 V battery, and a voltmeter...

The current-voltage relationship for a jfet device is approximately a quadratic expression defined by just two parameters, the saturation current, I_dss, and the pinch-off voltage, which I'll call V_gs0.

I = I_dss (1-V/V_gs0)^2

In principle, therefore, to characterize the device all we need is two data points (I1, V1) and (I2, V2) to solve the expression above for I_dss and V_gs0. We don't need to measure I_dss or V_gs0 directly.

All you need to do is connect the jfet device-under-test (DUT) as shown, and measure the voltages across two different source resistances. That's it. The excel worksheet computes the I_dss and V_gs0 values for you (or you can do it by hand, the formulas are provided.)

The math is a bit messy, but if you can solve a quadratic expression it's easy enough.

*****

Note: I found it was important to include...

Achievement Unlocked: 75 Watt Class A Zero Feedback SIT Circlotron


Soft clipping at 75W

Because of the high input capacitance of the 2SK180’s and the gain of this circuit, we have to pull out all the stops to get our 75W beast to make audio bandwidth. Here you can see that each SIT is getting its own transformer and buffer.

Development thread here. Web page here.

CrystalFET is a J113 jfet-based two-stage phono preamp, with passive equalization and on-board MOSFET-based shunt voltage regulator.

Jfets Q1 and Q3 should be matched between channels, and for best results the value of drain resistors R2 and R9 should be selected based on the jfet pinch off voltage of Q1 and Q3 respectively.

rev. 1.4e (final version) removes some unneeded resistors and tidies up the board layout a little. The resistors have been renumbered.

This device is a steal on Taobao, but having had a quick listen last night it could sound clearer. When connected to my smartphone (Meizu MX4 pro) and compared side by side with my 'Buffalito' (not a blind comparison mind) into my SuperLuxes, there were a few notable deficiencies.

First the soundstage air was less apparent. Second there's some sibilance noticeable on voices. And third the background hiss is slightly more apparent and a slight whine comes from the power supply. So I figured - open her up.....

Inside its fairly simple, the more or less standard configuration of a pot, then opamp gain stage then discrete diamond buffer. Which is great because I already have experience with this topology. The power supply is a built in LiIon cell with a boost converter supplying 12V in a single rail and there's a passive rail splitter. The dual opamp is an EL2244, one I've not seen before in such a setup.

First up - the input pot is too low a value at...

Measured at 24/96 with my Asus Xonar STX soundcard (~ -147 dB noise floor)

The Chromecast Audio output noise powered with the included USB wall wart supply is -130 dB at 1 kHz, rising gradually at lower frequencies and showing some switching power supply noise peaks at 4763 Hz and higher multiples, never exceeding about -120 dB.

This is respectable performance given its price point.

A while back I did a series of blogs on voltage regulators. Back with a new entry today: The Crystal M, configured here for 40 V DC output and a 25 mA load.

The circuit is based on two p-channel MOSFETs, the top one is a constant current source, the bottom one a constant voltage source. As the load current changes, the voltage source adjusts its current to balance.

It's lifted directly on the Salas shunt design (as reworked by me for my own jFET phono stage), but the circuit can also be considered a distant, DC-coupled relative of the Zen amp.

I trick, I discovered, to getting it to work nicely - the attached screencap shows it well-behaved while handling a full-swing output current pulse - is the source resistor R10. This resistance dials-down the current gain of the MOSFET, damping out the overshoot.

The ripple rejection is about 70 dB over the audio bandwidth. The output impedance is about 0.05 ohms over the same frequency...