Low-distortion Audio-range Oscillator

Bruce Hofer's presentation seems to indicate SMT thin film resistors of larger package sizes are good performers, esp the lower tempco parts. I believe at least one of OPC's "The Wire" headphone amp projects here used Susumu RG resistors and the measurements looked spotless. I'd try those in 1206 instead of MELF which I hate because they roll all over the damn place.

You haven't discovered the secret of putting slots in the board for them?
Then they don't roll away.
 
Never actually used them on a PCB I designed, just a board I assembled. Nice tip, but I'm far too lazy to create a special footprint with slots cut in it 😉. Plus I figured there would be less issues in pick-and-place if going the automated route with standard rectangular resistors.
 
A touch of flux will keep them from rolling around. I usually hold them with tweezers and tack solder one end, then solder the other and go back to the first and do a good job. I haven't had too many issues with the MELF components. Having colour codes on resistors is nice.

-Chris
 
If you consider a balanced source as 'signal + reference', and the tee input as 'signal + reference', would that not work? Also on output side.
That is how Bruno showed a single pot controlling a different signal in his G-word article.

Jan

This works on the output, but on the input you're going to still need to convert to single-ended in front of the filter unless you want to just ignore one of the outputs, no?
 
Have tested KEMET 200V 0.01uF 1206 COGs. Very good performance. Practically the same as the Wima FKP2 (in post #5199). Needs to compare these capacitors in better conditions 🙂.

Film capacitors also have lower distortion with higher voltage ratings. I suspect you may be getting to the point where the capacitor distortion is not the limiting factor.

The other possible improvement is to use four capacitors in series parallel to keep the value the same as a single. Then with an "H" layout you can minimize both vibration induced changes and lower the inductance a bit.
 
If you can try the series parallel thing that would be an interesting result.

It was suggested to me that the variation of results from polypropylene testing is due in part to
the purity of the polymer. Is ceramic process easier to control?
 
Last edited:
If you can try the series parallel thing that would be an interesting result.

It was suggested to me that the variation of results from polypropylene testing is due in part to
the purity of the polymer. Is ceramic process easier to control?

Yes, would be interesting... But for the further experiments I need better conditions - needs to replace LME49720 with some better 🙂