Part of a series.

The GeminiPS is another discrete series voltage regulator, with a Zener reference and bipolar pass transistor. It's an old circuit, published in Practical Electronics in 1970-71, and written by D.S. Gibbs and I.M. Shaw. I happen to have a reprint, but there's a nice overview here.

For reference it might be worth checking back to the two transistor regulator. The GeminiPS circuit is related in the sense that it is a more sophisticated take on the same basic principle. With just a handful of components we have a stabilized, 30 W output with soft turn on and short circuit protection. The circuit can be scaled up and down relatively easily, and the complimentary (negative output) version is an easy modification.

The pass transistor (TR2/3, Q2/3) is between the circuit common and the rectifier anodes. This may seem odd, but it was relatively common back in the day when high voltage transistors were both expensive and rare. The...

I've munged the earlier 8 inductor filters down to only 5 - this one is using off-the-shelf TDK inductors, SLF7045-681, albeit they need to be hand-selected to get the correct values as the production tolerance is 20%. X7R caps sound just fine, surprisingly

FR is -3dB at 17,8kHz with around 0.25dB of passband ripple.

This will be a collection of ideas developed and experiences encountered in my personal foray into the world of audio. In part, this is to counter much of the negativity and beliefs out there about the limitations of bog-standard, [I]vin ordinaire[/I], reproduced sound from conventional recordings, heard via a normal pair of speakers.

First of all, the sound can get very, very, [I]very[/I] good. Far beyond normal hifi, better than "live" much of the time ... so how can that be so? Because, typically for the recording session the positioning of the microphones, and acoustics, are optimised and tweaked by the sound engineers to pick up a "quality" well beyond what you as an ordinary audience member, concert goer, would experience.

So, how good? Well, for a start you can get "invisible" speakers, meaning that they can't be perceived as being the source of the sound; even if you go up to them and stare at them very closely, and move...

Part of a series.

I've been meaning to take up shunt regulators for some time. I've never got around to building one myself to try, so I'll have to make do by playing in simulation.

Today's circuit is the shunt analog of the Z-reg series regulator: no feedback, Zener reference, single transistor regulation. The output impedance and ripple rejection-characteristics are similar too, with about 40 dB of RR and an output impedance of just a few ohms. It can be built equivalently from either an pnp or pnp transistor. (See attached LTSpice .asc files.)

The difference between shunt and series regulation can best be explained by considering the upstream power supply: In a series regulator an increase in current demand by the load causes the regulator to increase the current to compensate. In a shunt regulator an increase in current demand by the load causes the regulator to decrease the shunt current to balance, so there is no net change in current flowing...

This array of 127 10,000uF caps measures -j2.9mohms at 50Hz which I reckon makes it comfortably over 1F in capacitance. ESR is 1mohm @ 50Hz.

The individual caps were measuring on average 8,500uF. Although they're marked 10V (the brand is ChengX a slightly shady Chinese one) they're not good for anywhere near this voltage. I reckon they're in reality 6.3V and they seem to have decently low leakage at this working voltage. I shall be using them at 5V or below.

Update1 - seems I wasn't using enough copper in the wiring. I've now built a second one with 2.5mm2 wiring around the loops and 1.5mm diameter cross links and ESR is down to 0.5mohm @ 50Hz now, decreasing at higher freqs. I have enough caps left for a third one...

Update2 - now the first array has a basement level giving 2.1F total with ESR below 0.4mohms @ 50Hz. There are six paralleled TDA1387s atop the combined hexagons giving unprecedented LF dynamics. Amp long, long overdue for an upgrade.......

Case report:

A set of Sapphire boards gave the proper V+, V- voltages out of the Z-reg, providing about 10.5 and -10.5 to op amp power pins. The output offsets were unusually high however, apparently at about 2 V in one board, and somewhat less in the other. Typically the offsets are in the order of +/-15 mV.

Changing out transistors and op amps did not help, and to all inspection the passive components were installed correctly and working properly. The offset voltages were extremely temperature sensitive. Measurements for the various circuit voltages were just screwy enough to be inconclusive.

I could ask for no more tests, so requested the boards be sent back to me. I found the circuit basically worked as expected, but the offsets were indeed high on both boards, though I measured 0.6 V max rather than 2 V.

***** stop here and make a guess *****

Blowing on the board through a soda straw, the offset shot up when I blew on...

Here is one method to capture your computer measurements
from your computer screen.

To capture only a window that is selected:

Press ALT and Print Screen
keys at the same time.

OR

To capture the whole computer screen image:
Press the Print Screen key.

Then open your paint program and paste
the capture:

Press CTRL and V keys.

Your window/screen is now in your paint program.
Save it in a JPEG format.

Note, the generic paint program is listed
under the Start Menu:All Programs:Accessories:Paint

When saving, look and see where Windows
puts the file...it can get real tricky to find again.

IMG or BMG files are huge.
JPG (Joint Photographic Expert Group)
has algorithms that compress the file size
down to make it easier to send and receive.

Here is my screen capture:

https://origin.dastatic.com/forums/ga...rintScreen.jpg

Here's my current bench lash-up DAC based on three hexacaps. Total capacitance of the order of 1.3F.

32fs EIAJ is fed in, balanced, from the left, the central hexacap feeds two TDA1545ATs. Filters are TDK inductor based, six stage balanced with X7R caps (gasp!). Caps in the centre provide the mid-rail power (2.5V) which the I/V resistors are fed from. The two hexacaps on the right power the post amps based on AD815ARBs, gain set roughly to 26dB with a little NOS droop correction. They're the postage-stamp sized boards roughly in the middle. Output is differential and fed to ferrite-cored transformers to convert to SE.

I'm blown away by the dynamics of this, given the right recording. Next up is an amp based on paralleling 8 or 10 AD815s. Each fed from its own hexacap, of course....

Update1 - the DAC supply has now been upgraded to two tiers of the 4700uFs, interconnected by six 1.5mm diameter solid copper wires. Capacitive reactance measures 2.5mohm...

Built the Bugle 2 to replace my Boozehound J-fet riaa. I had som headache trying to sort out a mistake I made, mixing up som resistors, but it works! And it sings beautifully

I do rank the Boozehound above this one, but the Bugle 2 most assuredly kicks the Gram Amp 2 SE's butt, bigtime.

It must be close to 12 months ago that I saw the PIC32MX450. I was convinced that a chip that included two I2S audio interfaces, and ran at 100MHz implementing 32bit arithmetic in pretty snappy time would surely be able to do some fun audio stuff.

I started with getting a board designed, and porting the code that I use to control my Analog Devices audio DSP. Then I generated the code to implement a direct digital synthesiser. These worked fine.

Over the last couple of weeks I have completed the "core code" for a digital crossover all implemented in the PIC32 itself.

The basic implementation is:
- An analogue to digital converter
- The PIC
- A digital to analogue converter
(Oh and an interface PCB done on veroboard to route the MCLK and power to the A/D and D/As. I am kind of tempted to re-spin the PIC32 board to do this for me...)

The PIC drives the I2S interface as master, generating...