Go Back   Home > Forums > Blogs

If I put my notes here, I might be able to find them again later!
Old

Hi-end audio, as seen from outside the bubble.

Posted 3rd June 2013 at 11:28 PM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 3rd June 2013 at 11:32 PM by rjm

In early May Trent Wolbe traveled to the High End trade show in Munich, Germany. This is part one of a two part series exploring the cutting edge of audiophile technology.

By Trent Wolbe, writing for The Verge. A feature on high end audio part 1 and part 2.

Quote:
It was halfway through the next selection, a quietly seductive 24 / 192 recording of “Cielito Lindo,” that I realized I was enjoying the music quite a lot, not because I particularly enjoy bossanova versions of Mexican classics, but because the Evolution One speakers were recreating one of my favorite things about eating psychedelic mushrooms.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	highEnd_300_3.jpg
Views:	613
Size:	62.9 KB
ID:	1090  
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Views 1101 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

Hakko FX-888 : ebay unhappiness

Posted 29th May 2013 at 12:12 PM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 29th May 2013 at 11:59 PM by rjm

Oh, for Heaven's sake...

Just got the FX-888 soldering station I bought on ebay.

It does not power up.

Do you know why it doesn't power up?

So glad you asked...

It does not power up because - pause for effect - the fuse board that fits on the power transformer is inserted the wrong way round. That's right, the full "rotated 180 degrees" deal.

Fortunately I have another soldering iron. You know, so I can fix my soldering iron...

*****

I would just return it, but the shipping would cost me half again what I paid for it. Perhaps ebay will refund me anyway. We'll see.

I think I know what happened: The people selling these are modding them by changing the voltage and power cord. The soldering stations are officially bound for the Chinese domestic market, 220 VAC. The box, when it came, had "110V" hand-written on it, though the instructions...
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	DSC_7919.jpg
Views:	5102
Size:	190.7 KB
ID:	1085   Click image for larger version

Name:	35ho2mg sm.jpg
Views:	2239
Size:	102.4 KB
ID:	1086  
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Views 3054 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

Circuit O' The Day : A headphone output buffer.

Posted 28th May 2013 at 12:24 AM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 28th May 2013 at 12:08 PM by rjm

Experimental : For Research Use Only

It's bring-your-own-voltage-gain. This output stage is a unity gain buffer. A sort of diamond-buffer-meets-sziklai-pair hybrid. It lets the driver pair bias the output pair without the complexity of an additional bias network, but, unlike the basic diamond buffer, the output pair can have a much higher bias current than the drivers.

LTspice file attached, if you'd like to play along.

*****

I did my best to shut my eyes and design this just by messing about in LTSpice from the starting idea of a "level-shifted-complementary-sziklai-pair" (i.e. mirrored J-Mo mk II), but I see now a shout-out to 47 Labs is due as the 0247 Treasure uses the same stage.

Ah well, I guess my neat idea isn't new after all.

*****

The general performance is in the order of 0.01% THD for 50 mW / 16-300 ohms at 100 mA bias though the output pair. I've been trying to...
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	buffer 03f.png
Views:	1449
Size:	47.5 KB
ID:	1083  
Attached Files
File Type: asc buffer 03f.asc (3.0 KB, 225 views)
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Posted in The Lab
Views 1266 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

Headphone amplifiers: thinking aloud

Posted 20th May 2013 at 06:13 AM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 21st May 2013 at 12:00 AM by rjm

The sobering fact is that the built-in headphone jack on most modern consumer electronics provides pretty decent performance. Taking that output and routing it through an external headphone amplifier rarely improves things, and frequently has a negative impact owing to increased background noise.*

[* This is a simple consequence of adding a volume control which attenuates the signal, and a gain stage which amplifies it back up. Even if the gain stage has the same noise floor as the input signal, the S/N is reduced by the amount of attenuation.]

There are specific use cases, particularly with "outlier" headphone models that require unusually high voltages or currents to drive, but in the main, for generic 16 ohm IEHs and the generic headphone ICs used in consumer electronics, I've found that external headphone amplifiers aren't worth the trouble and expense.

Instead, I've taken (I realise now) an elitist approach to focus on a desktop...
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Posted in The Lab
Views 684 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

A catalog of headphone amplifier circuits.

Posted 19th May 2013 at 10:45 AM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 21st May 2013 at 12:12 AM by rjm

Lots of circuits out there, but most are variations of a small set of archetypes. Let's see if I can put together a list:

1. Dedicated headphone amplifier IC. e.g.(lme49860)

2. Battery powered, single stage, generic audio op amp. The ever-popular mint tin cmoy.

3. Op amp + buffer (complementary transistor pair, diamond buffer, unity gain op amp, etc, in either integrated or discrete package.)
a. closed loop connection or "compound amplifier" configuration as developed by Walt Jung.
b. open loop, two stage circuit, e.g. nwavguy o2 and my sapphire amp.

4. simple 2 or 3 transistor "introduction to electronics"-style amplifier

5. The "little big amp", a scaled back version of a transistor or vacuum tube power amplifier design. (Zen, DoZ, transformer coupled SET amps)

6. The power follower. Single-ended MOSFET or BJT, with or without CCS load, voltage...
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Views 1399 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

Which soldering station should I buy?

Posted 17th May 2013 at 07:47 AM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 20th May 2013 at 05:20 AM by rjm

Thinking I should get a new soldering station.

I've had my eye on a Weller station for the longest time, but put off getting one for one reason or another.

Looking at the selection, I think the choice comes down to the two following models, or, indeed the equivalent made by another company:

WTCPT (link)

WES51 (link)

The main difference is in the WTCPT the tip temperature is fixed, but rigorously controlled, while the WES51 has user adjustable power but the tip temperature is left unregulated.

I'm leaning towards the WES51 as being slightly more in line with my own style of work: I'm more likely to want higher or lower temperatures depending on the job at hand than I am to require "700F" exactly.

Update 1.

A little concerned the WES51 is only 50W max. That's less than the maximum I use now for the tough stuff.

Hakko has two models in the price...
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Posted in Uncategorized
Views 1060 Comments 6 rjm is offline
Old

Audacity sucks.

Posted 9th May 2013 at 02:50 PM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 10th May 2013 at 03:35 AM by rjm

Under windows at least, Audacity is unable to record audio at bitrates above 16 bit.

It will seem to, all right, but the data is quantized at 16 bit (30 microvolt LSB), regardless of the settings chosen.

The attached images show the same source, the first recording is made in Audacity, supposedly 24 bit, but actually only 16 bit, while the second is recorded with a program than actually supports 24 bit, exported, and imported into Audacity. The data is amplified +70dB in both cases to make the difference visible.

Audacity will happily manipulate and save high bit rate data, but as a result of licensing restrictions and on account of it being freeware, it does not support the actual recording of this data.

***

Any internet search will confirm that the Windows version of Audacity is limited to 16 bit recording. And yes, it's more of a limitation of Windows than it is of Audacity. My irritation, however, is chiefly with Audacity...
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	16bitLSB.png
Views:	224
Size:	102.3 KB
ID:	987   Click image for larger version

Name:	24bitLSB.png
Views:	273
Size:	55.0 KB
ID:	988  
Attached Files
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Views 940 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

J-Mo Mk. II vs. Szekeres, distortion comparison

Posted 3rd May 2013 at 08:24 AM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 5th May 2013 at 11:52 PM by rjm

Two headphone amplifiers sharing the same basic MOSFET source follower output stage.

When the source current and source resistance are optimized for the given headphone load and similar maximum output power (~50 mW at 1% THD), the distortion pattern vs. output power is remarkably similar.

One plot below is simulation, the other measurements. The J-Mo 2 simulation closely matched the actual measurements, it wasn't worth my while to generate a full simulated data set when I already had the measurements on hand. No reason to suspect that the Szekeres sim is inaccurate, either.

The take home message is the distortion characteristic of a MOSFET follower is what it is, and unavoidable. Take it or leave it, as it were. However - and this is key - if you don't optimize the stage for the headphone impedance, the distortion for a given output power will increase significantly.

As an aside: Greg did his homework with the original circuit....
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	szekeres THD sim.png
Views:	512
Size:	27.4 KB
ID:	980   Click image for larger version

Name:	jmo2 thd sim.png
Views:	517
Size:	32.1 KB
ID:	981   Click image for larger version

Name:	IMGP6429 1280.jpg
Views:	465
Size:	386.1 KB
ID:	982   Click image for larger version

Name:	IMGP6436 1280.jpg
Views:	724
Size:	408.4 KB
ID:	983  
Attached Files
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Views 1201 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

Szekeres Headphone Driver, distortion simulation

Posted 3rd May 2013 at 08:11 AM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 3rd May 2013 at 08:15 AM by rjm

I've always enjoyed the sound of the Greg Szekeres' Headphone Driver (buffer) and derivatives sharing the MOSFET source follower output stage.

I've often wondered however, whether it's distinctive sound is because it is unusually free from noise and artifacts, or because its unusually prone to heavy second harmonic distortion.

It's not hard to set this up in LTSpice, but I haven't seen it done before. So, for your education and enlightenment, I present the harmonic distortion vs. output power data for the original "classic" circuit as uploaded to Headwize all those years ago. The LTSpice asc file is also included I you want to play along. The harmonic data is generated by hand, reading the FFT peaks for 10 or so different input voltages.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	szekeres sim circuit.png
Views:	619
Size:	50.6 KB
ID:	976   Click image for larger version

Name:	szekeres THD sim 2.png
Views:	463
Size:	28.2 KB
ID:	978   Click image for larger version

Name:	szeke2.gif
Views:	1991
Size:	6.0 KB
ID:	979  
Attached Files
File Type: asc Szekeres.asc (2.1 KB, 254 views)
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Posted in The Lab
Views 1638 Comments 0 rjm is offline
Old

Discrete transistor line amplifier stage mod 1

Posted 19th April 2013 at 10:24 PM by rjm (RJM Audio Blog)
Updated 20th April 2013 at 05:04 AM by rjm

Changed the collector load on the voltage amplifier stage to a current source (Q3), as per the Marantz SR2285B circuit.

Also increased the resistance of the feedback connection, R6+R8, there seemed to be no obvious advantage in making it much smaller than the typical load (>10k). The compensation capacitor C2 is increased to match, to flatten the HF response.

The circuit can drive light loads to +20 dB. Of course that's not much of a challenge for this general class of circuit.

I'm a bit stumped as to what the next logical step is from here. Seems to me to depend on what you actually want the circuit to do.
Attached Thumbnails
Click image for larger version

Name:	RJM discrete mod1.png
Views:	1286
Size:	59.2 KB
ID:	963  
Attached Files
File Type: asc RJM discrete mod1.asc (3.5 KB, 189 views)
rjm's Avatar
rjm
diyAudio Member
Posted in The Lab
Views 1079 Comments 0 rjm is offline

New To Site? Need Help?
Copyright ©1999-2017 diyAudio