Being as you apparently supply such parts, I can't say you are likely to be unbiased.
Pot, kettle,-black is the term.
I love blind tests because it shows up bias for what it is.
Usually sound engineers like blind tests, because it enables them to understand the shortcomings of what they are doing and correct them.
"audiophiles" hate them with a passion. 😀
I totally agree with you and your approach.
I wish more people were aware of the blindingly obvious.
It appears this is one of the primary considerations for making a reproduction system deliver the goods, but when you look at the vast majority of speaker systems you see an up to -10dB drop in SPL below 100hz, whereas for it to work in close to reality it needs to have a flat (ish) curve or better*, as this is where all the energy is.
Quite apart from the gross exaggerations caused to response with valve amps, as Harbeth has repeatedly pointed out....the fact speaker impedance rise drastically when approaching resonance is important in linearity and response,- nothing to do with PSU problems.
Only some Altec driver legacy designs work on this basis* as do quite a few (hi quality) headphones.
Unfortunately there are other reasons why headphones are unrealistic, mostly concerned with "the image behind the head", the fact you can't share them, and of course the poor resolution which rarely exceeds even 15 bit, a rare exception being the amazing new ESL that just came out from Janszen, his work on ESLs in general, and the KLH9
Give credit for where it's due.
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Of course it didn't took you long to jump to this kind of argument. Kind of expected. And a familiar pattern repeats itself.
But sadly enough you didn't study the other thread's participants being and experience enough to conclude what kind of methodologies and approaches they're applying within their audio research. Anyway this seemed to give an inner reason to jump on conclusions and beliefs.
By the accumulated circle of clients, audio colleagues and myself is a social place where people can share subjective musical experiences. And for the fun of things, I avoid pre-biasing my clients with arguments due to hunger of reading their unbiassed reviews.
In fact most of my clients are experimenters. They buy a product without being familiar with its acoustical properties. What they're left with, is installation, listening and possibly comparison to other products.
I also love blind tests when possible. Sometimes when I need to hear other people's opinion on devices or products, a few audio circle friends with trained ears are invited for a listen and share an opinion. The visuals of the devices are hidden and swapped a lot of times. If there is any audibility detected throughout the swaps, it is carefully studied and described thoroughly. And somehow it turns out there are audiophiles who don't hate blind tests?
In the end, the audible differences, if any, are carefully discussed. Arguments like width and depth of soundstage, sharpness, evenness, PRaT, immediacy, decay, tonality, etc, are always welcome to our conversation. As for you, it's rubbish fantasy land of course.
Not that anything of this will matter to you, I suspect. Gentlemen like you will always strive to find an argument with the primary goal of contradiction.
So while not really finding a justifying reason to spent time trying to argue with you, at least my words could be useful to the thread author and other gentlemen with similar audio pathways.
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You really do like making assumptions don't you? 🙄
What makes you think I didn't read the rest of the thread, especially a key poster,- Brinkman, and his entire fully valid input.
( I have to congratulate him for pointing out the serious flaw in the entire thread.)
It must be annoying to be found out with vested interests in keeping the bs coming. 😀
Meaningless stuff like...
I don't see hold a lot of stock or credibility for "audio hi end" groups in the ex-USSR**, but that's another problem based on experience and observation,
(indeed some freak I know well who claims to make such professional microphones as "Nevaton"unrecognisably better than the actual manufacturer), while Austrian radio themselves used this faulty device in Salzbourg festival claiming how wonderful it was.
I've seen the video, read the book, been there!
ie.
And presumably buy what you make....
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Not reading the rest of the thread, but studying the participant's audio beings and methodologies. You cannot be informed of this unless you know these people personally, or at least have read documented experiences of theirs, if they have wished to post such.
Mr. Brinkman shared an opinion, an input like you called it. What does it do to describe his overall view towards audio?
Unless Mr. Brinkman clearly describes his view, you are just making assumptions of his position.
"Serious flaw", as you call it, is just another assumption of yours, as well as claim. And belief. As well as "It must be annoying".
Honestly, probably annoying are your posts towards people who wish their idea of conversation is kept from being polluted. As for me, it doesn't really make a difference.
Mr. Brinkman shared an opinion, an input like you called it. What does it do to describe his overall view towards audio?
Unless Mr. Brinkman clearly describes his view, you are just making assumptions of his position.
"Serious flaw", as you call it, is just another assumption of yours, as well as claim. And belief. As well as "It must be annoying".
Honestly, probably annoying are your posts towards people who wish their idea of conversation is kept from being polluted. As for me, it doesn't really make a difference.
one simple word JARGON. Proper measurements with some at least decent conformity to what Fletcher-Munson curves need, are the antidote to the Jargon avalanche.
Someone ... has the honesty to call out the fantasy for what it is.
Early in the thread, it became apparent that the audiophools were cranking up their opinion gins, to tirelessly zest the same lemons that are repeated thread-after-thread, year-after-year, decade-after-decade.
[1] Power supplies, at their best, are invisibly quiet
[2] And hold steady their output power, regardless of drain/demand
[3] On timescales from sub-milliseconds to hours
[4] Don't cost a fortune
[5] Aren't made from unobtrainium and unicorn horn
[6] Are compact enough, long lived, and fast settling after power-up.
We can debate 'how', and opinions vary, but as I opined earlier this is best accomplished by cLcXC where 'c' is a small-value capacitor (22 uF), 'L' is a mid-value choke, X is a simple low-drop series regulator referenced to a temperature compensated voltage source, such as a string of gas VR tubes or a TC stack of Zeners. And 'C' is a large value cap, to drop the output impedance into the low-ohms range even below 20 Hz. Every single point above is met, and kept. If sharp MOSFET, then [4], [5], [6] are delivered without hassle.
Again, thanks for your wake-up call.
GoatGuy
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I think this hate reaction to a blind test often isn't about the test, its more about test administrators who don't know how to properly do such a test socially. So it basically becomes a "got ya" trick upon the listener rather than a useful test, so it becomes a kind of tease or insult. After the test the victim realizes just how many variables were involved and that in the end it all still came down to "taste", not anything anyone in the room, even the admin, could prove was the "truth".
I used to think a/b testing was valid, but after attending all 3 days of Axpona with my wife for the last 10 years and being in countless a/b sessions, I've started to see how many truly f'ed up test administrators suckered me. Your brains Psychoacoustics and taste are the only things that matter and your willingness to try other things.
But I do believe there is value in fast-flip a/b testing for the amp engineer, but only to identify how they are different, not how one is better. Fast flip a/b in the middle of a trumpet solo or upright bass run can reveal differences by omitting the psychoacoustic memory factor. Hearing the differences you can maybe use that as another measuring tool.
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In the end it gets negatively emotional.
The one camp, the sceptics about the phenomena insist on the blind test, believing it is a proof to existence of audibility. A main issue lies in their lack of questioning the nature of the test at first sight, analyzing its nature from depth. Often they lack the will to study human psychology and behavior.
At the other end, the "hearers" of different audible phenomena will get insulted if the sceptics take advantage of the test to quickly make of assumption of a non-existence of phenomena hearers are observing.
What we need for proper scientific research is open minded neutral approach. Not take sides and not rushing to deny or approve a phenomena, but optimize a research system with an attempt to isolate the result from all potential pollutions of the same final result. Identification of the pollutants can take a lot of research.
What many humans fail to understand is, they can be biased at neither side of the coin. Throughout ego, throughout emotions, throughout the will of resisting change. A person claiming of a entirely objective opinion, if not executed with an objective protocoled system, is just another subjective opinion with the claim of objectivity.
Those who deny the existence of phenomena throughout an objective system have to prove this system can be relied this same phenomena.
The one camp, the sceptics about the phenomena insist on the blind test, believing it is a proof to existence of audibility. A main issue lies in their lack of questioning the nature of the test at first sight, analyzing its nature from depth. Often they lack the will to study human psychology and behavior.
At the other end, the "hearers" of different audible phenomena will get insulted if the sceptics take advantage of the test to quickly make of assumption of a non-existence of phenomena hearers are observing.
What we need for proper scientific research is open minded neutral approach. Not take sides and not rushing to deny or approve a phenomena, but optimize a research system with an attempt to isolate the result from all potential pollutions of the same final result. Identification of the pollutants can take a lot of research.
What many humans fail to understand is, they can be biased at neither side of the coin. Throughout ego, throughout emotions, throughout the will of resisting change. A person claiming of a entirely objective opinion, if not executed with an objective protocoled system, is just another subjective opinion with the claim of objectivity.
Those who deny the existence of phenomena throughout an objective system have to prove this system can be relied this same phenomena.
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I anticipated this one too:-
(let's say I saw that coming!)
No suprise then, I come from the professional audio/monitoring and live recording end of it all, which after all has much better resolution than you will ever get in your home after the recording has royally been screwed up by the editing and compression process.
For a big opera production you have to work in a team, with people who are somewhat "on the same wavelength", not arguing interminably about nonsense.
People who actually are involved in testing and improving studio microphones working with the manufacturers are a damn sight more objective than you will ever be.
We don't need more jargon about psychology or objectivity, we quite simply need to record music, and be sure it sounds good.
In a live environment it's already a tough call, as anyone who ever listened to Covent Garden opera live will tell you. (they do a great job!).
Being able to monitor it properly is the name of the game, and for which I have zero confidence in the "hi end" / "audiophile" people with their Anal stuff about speaker cables, chokes, capacitors. power conditioners and all the paraphernalia and bum jargon they wander around with.
Not Imagining things that are happening, (but are not) or being sherlock holmes to find out why something doesn't work right is everyday stuff.
Notice the orchestra pit behind the blind test of the 2 microphones.
My friend then blind tested me on the microphones, which one was in use in the mix, (Mozart) and why.
I didn't give a rat's A, about his psychology, I just wanted to know how we could improve on the astonishing difference in the 2 microphone characteristics which were in exactly the same places, (& after successfully identifying them blind by the sound.).
The makers were as interested as us, because nobody had ever given them a proper test in a live environment, and there we are talking about one of their clients being Austrian radio!
Both microphone manufacturers thanked us for our help, and really improved the product.
btw:-
One of them (the long one) is supposed to be a copy of a DPA (B & K).
'nuff said,- dunno why I bother really.
(let's say I saw that coming!)
Welcome to come to our recording set up, so show me how to do it.
No suprise then, I come from the professional audio/monitoring and live recording end of it all, which after all has much better resolution than you will ever get in your home after the recording has royally been screwed up by the editing and compression process.
For a big opera production you have to work in a team, with people who are somewhat "on the same wavelength", not arguing interminably about nonsense.
People who actually are involved in testing and improving studio microphones working with the manufacturers are a damn sight more objective than you will ever be.
We don't need more jargon about psychology or objectivity, we quite simply need to record music, and be sure it sounds good.
In a live environment it's already a tough call, as anyone who ever listened to Covent Garden opera live will tell you. (they do a great job!).
Being able to monitor it properly is the name of the game, and for which I have zero confidence in the "hi end" / "audiophile" people with their Anal stuff about speaker cables, chokes, capacitors. power conditioners and all the paraphernalia and bum jargon they wander around with.
Not Imagining things that are happening, (but are not) or being sherlock holmes to find out why something doesn't work right is everyday stuff.
Notice the orchestra pit behind the blind test of the 2 microphones.
My friend then blind tested me on the microphones, which one was in use in the mix, (Mozart) and why.
I didn't give a rat's A, about his psychology, I just wanted to know how we could improve on the astonishing difference in the 2 microphone characteristics which were in exactly the same places, (& after successfully identifying them blind by the sound.).
The makers were as interested as us, because nobody had ever given them a proper test in a live environment, and there we are talking about one of their clients being Austrian radio!
Both microphone manufacturers thanked us for our help, and really improved the product.
btw:-
One of them (the long one) is supposed to be a copy of a DPA (B & K).
'nuff said,- dunno why I bother really.
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Kinda looks like a saucer section with a pair of warp nacelles, or have there been too many ufo threads clouding my thinking…
What is measured in the two plots?
Can you please explain what is being measured in the two plots, and highlight the key differences between them?
Can you please explain what is being measured in the two plots, and highlight the key differences between them?
Well done then! It is highly possible you did not participate in a conversation of such nature for the first time!
But what you fail to understand as well, lies within the association, or the belief and will to associate aspects with a phenomena, for the sake of understanding and/or accepting the phenomena.
However there isn't proof that these associated aspects to the phenomena can actually explain it, or prove it.
In your case, as far as I understand, you're know describing some pieces of your professional audio background. Thanks for your description, hats off for it, I'm not questioning your work neither experience.
Neither I'm questioning the nature of objectivity. When doing science, we are supposed to be objective to the core and usually within the procedure lies insulation from other variables.
In your example of microphone blind testing I can neither know or judge if you or your friend did hear differences. And it is probable there aren't detectable differences. Or not.
A similar point of view goes for you. You can not either know or judge if someone really did hear or not differences, in your example, chokes, capacitors or cables in another set ups. You can not know if there were differences or not, or did the auditory detect any.
The skeptics of phenomena in this topic usually attempt to associate it with the knowledge they learned at school, university and professional background. They tend to believe these tools are the key to the only possible explanation and if such explanation is missing, they quickly rush into believing it is a proof towards the absence of phenomena.
If we start thinking in practical hypotheses, we don't have to assume, if something inaudible within a recording setup will stay the same within a playback setup.
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Ah yes, that is the FFT graph for FR using a sweep trace from 20hz-20khz with a Neumann KM directly compared with a Nevaton microphone, both of them in exactly the same spot, kind of a bit like the live music test we did at the opera house, but with FR traces.
The source is my own studio monitor system.
This is all OT, but shows empirical data is king, not "touchy-feely" stuff ie. most of the things here I criticised so it's worth reading the details, and answers the previous poster quite well.
It's a "quick and dirty" test to explain, we can measure what we hear, and display why it sounds different.
It's not scientific and doesn't use REW.
What you see is what you get.
Here it is again:-
https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/att...-neumann_bottom_trace_v_neva_music_woofer-jpg
Some remarks,-
The valve amp used to power the speakers is highly unusual and displays no roll off into an inductive load at full power right down to below 20hz.
There is good correlation between the 2 mic curves.
It shows in great detail, a sharp rolloff at LF below 43hz on the Neumann which is the bottom trace.
It correlates well with the manufacturer's graph shown.
However,-
the normal -4dB roll off which the Neumann mic should display 100hz>45hz is not visible instead we see a +14dB rising rate below 100hz on the Neumann, and a flat reponse of +14dB on the Nevaton giving similar levels.
Being as almost all speaker systems display a -10dB roll off from 100hz down this would imply the monitor system has a gain approaching +20dB compared with anything I ever saw in a "high end" shop.
This would imply high sensitivity more expected of a large horn system.
+20dB at LF is a bit like comparing a system with 100s of watts with another of only 2-4W, because LF is where all the energy is.
This is why I am with "Brinkmann" on this.
Make a system which approaches the needs of Fletcher-Munson, especially at decent sound levels, and you are half way there.
Being as the system is designed to be able to reproduce organ recordings ultra cleanly, and dissect live recordings, it has met its target.
It still struggles with my live recording of Tchaikovski Francesca da Rimini which not a single hifi system I found can reproduce. haha!
On the upper trace the Nevaton shows a noticeable drop in output from 1,7khz up compared with the Neumann, which has a rising output from 8khz up.
If you compare the actual results from the studio system with the manufacturers graph for the Neumann, 3 remarks would be obvious.
We have to differentiate between the performance of the monitor system and the performance of each individual mic in order to be able to get some idea why they sound so different.
1/ Observing the general trend regardless of the actual positioning of the mics in front of the large array, the bass response of the system is enormous, and that the Nevaton does not have an extra -6dB roll off below 45hz.
This came as a suprise.
remark-.
It's extremely rare to see substantially flat bass reponse down to 22hz, proving such testing impossible in any "hi end shop".
The idea was to produce a sound system similar or better than Altec / great plains.
It appears we succeeded.
2/ A peak at 250-350hz is observable which cannot come from the microphones, with another at 550-700hz. This equates to the behaviour of the mid range array which are actually "full range" drivers.
This confirmed my observation that full range drivers tend to be peaky but add clarity in the mid range.
3/ The Neumann is such a superb microphone, that my own favourite use for chamber music makes sense.
For us all it was a "revolution" discovering this one back in 2001 while recording a music festival.
It's no longer made.
I had numerous offers from people WTB.
The Nevaton microphone in our own words was "muddy" at anything over mid - to HF, but superb clarity at LF. We used it in pairs to bring in the double basses of the orchestra.
Compared say with a DPA, it was coloured and warm.
Conclusion:-
No chokes were used in the PSU of the amp delivering this performance, but the PSU transformers are oversized.(2 large ones in parallel).
In effect paralleling the large power supply (PSU) of 2 monoblocs works well, (connecting them together) but you will never see it done.
I used the same method as above to see if we could see a difference in spectral responses when bi-wiring some speakers in the high end shop, instead of single wiring, AND IF, it made a difference when wiring a pair on the 4 ohm tap instead of the 8 ohm tap.
(I suspected the Amphion speaker as dropping to 4ohm at some frequencies, instead of nominal 6-8ohms which it turned out was correct when checked).
The 2, US made mono blocs had seperate power supplies which were fed with a monster 1kW step down transformer 230-115V.
They are actually 70yrs old with old fashioned L-C and C-L-C PSU.
We were concerned that the amps didn't somehow sound right unless driving complex loads of 4 speakers instead of 2.
This turns out to be an anomaly with this amp.
I could hear a difference between the simple and bi-wiring as well as deliberate mismatch in impedance.
The test system with FFT above could SEE a difference each time superimposing before & after.
Ie. If you can't measure something, you are not measuring it right!
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According to this product information the Neumann KM143 is a combination of the AK43 transducer and the KM100 output stage: https://www.vintagemicworld.com/afbeeldingen/Neumann_KM100Brochure.pdf
The smaller microphone in the picture in post #91 would than be the transducer without the output stage. Although the picture isn't very detailed, I don't think the transducer is the same as the AK43 transducer shown in the Neumann product information.
The smaller microphone in the picture in post #91 would than be the transducer without the output stage. Although the picture isn't very detailed, I don't think the transducer is the same as the AK43 transducer shown in the Neumann product information.
I don't use KM100 with the active cables, (but you can and it would look very similar) so NO, -
The small microphone in the post is Nevaton. (LHS)
The large one is our Russian DPA clone. (without the XLR connected
RHS).
The curiosity with the Nevaton, is the class A circuit which drags a lot out of the phantom PSU.
It's one of the features they agreed to modify.
Nevaton is basically a small friendly company that picked up the pieces of the outstanding Lomo microphone range, one of which we have used.
It was impressive, I would say far superior to Schoeps, but with a weird plug on, that I believe was used in something military.
In the inventory are a number of calrec mikes which I salvaged out of BBC pension-offs.
Old calrecs are sought after, and are as good or better than old Neumann KM83/4 range.
The bloke who attempted restarting them, HEBDEN sound is a cretin, so what's good & British is gone.
One recent big production of Puccini had us all struggling,- cleaned us out so we even had to revert to good old DPA miniature wireless stuff!
To come back to the point of the thread.
Sound reproduction is every bit as important as recording, ESPECIALLY when it comes to surround production.
I don't need to be told that.
It's one of my constant lamentations, most decent opera houses & concert halls, (some of them with superb acoustics) have crap reproduction systems.
On top of that, the old hands are dying.
People like Rupert Neve, and the old boy I met from Melodia in SPB...
Without them, things become chaos, which is not helped by constant avalanches of jargon from people who claim to know something but don't.
The small microphone in the post is Nevaton. (LHS)
The large one is our Russian DPA clone. (without the XLR connected
RHS).
The curiosity with the Nevaton, is the class A circuit which drags a lot out of the phantom PSU.
It's one of the features they agreed to modify.
Nevaton is basically a small friendly company that picked up the pieces of the outstanding Lomo microphone range, one of which we have used.
It was impressive, I would say far superior to Schoeps, but with a weird plug on, that I believe was used in something military.
In the inventory are a number of calrec mikes which I salvaged out of BBC pension-offs.
Old calrecs are sought after, and are as good or better than old Neumann KM83/4 range.
The bloke who attempted restarting them, HEBDEN sound is a cretin, so what's good & British is gone.
One recent big production of Puccini had us all struggling,- cleaned us out so we even had to revert to good old DPA miniature wireless stuff!
To come back to the point of the thread.
Sound reproduction is every bit as important as recording, ESPECIALLY when it comes to surround production.
I don't need to be told that.
It's one of my constant lamentations, most decent opera houses & concert halls, (some of them with superb acoustics) have crap reproduction systems.
On top of that, the old hands are dying.
People like Rupert Neve, and the old boy I met from Melodia in SPB...
Without them, things become chaos, which is not helped by constant avalanches of jargon from people who claim to know something but don't.
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Sorry for jumpng in that late, but I am living in Germany and my house is one of those which got under water...lucky me that my system is located on the 2. level...but now I got some time.
As Alexander said, I am experimenting with Chokes and transformers for many years. Hib, Amorphous, Nano, Normal Wire, OCC, Monolith, Lundahl, Alexanders etcetc.
My 5ct I learned:
- All the materials sound different. For chamber music etc where you want finest transitients and details,amorphous is the entry drug and nano has better tone and details. HIB sounds stiffer, but more like transistor / Hifi. Not as authentic.
- Rdc is very audible. But I believe there is a range of which sounds most authentic, not a rule like the lower the better.
Example: I used the same choke from Alexander with two coils, each 75ohm for my line stage. Is you use it serial with 150 ohm, ot sounds very slow, not very dynamic, not very transparent. In parallel: You get all the good stuff and have true life and dynamics and tone.
I did this experiments with many PSUs and applications even like for DHT heater supply etc. I as well tried to go lower and lower in RDdc, but my impression is that you loose warmth and tonal fundament when you overdo it. There is a correct value for your Amplifier and Supply and 20 to 35 ohm for HV is a good starting point.
- You want to experiment with (c)-LCLC: Sometime a small c (like 0.5uF) makes a nice improvement for HV. For LV (heater) and higher current, I prefer without the small C. Real CLC is not an option for me.
- Do not oversize the current design target, current clamps your cores together...to avoid any noise
- If possible, prefer a simple LC over LCLC, so try how much ripple you can stand where...depends on the stage and amplification factor etc.
I compared OPT, chokes and IT from Alexander (50AE) with Lundahl, Monolith (Nano IT 1:1), AE_Europe. Elektraprint, Hammond etc with the counterparts of Alexander. Alexanders's devices are many times oversized, much bigger , never get warm at all...and sound manytimes better than Lundahl (nocomparison) and are even slightly beter than Monolith, which sounds a bit sterile compared to Alexander's stuff.
Alexander developed a nice tool to deisgn the needed choke more or less by your self. So, you can simulate the effect of thicker wire, bigger cores on Rdc, flux density etcetc. Its awesome. That way I was able to design chokes to my real needs and use core or wire reserves for what I believe in (like not to high flux denisty, low rdc). That way you ofthen get your targets fulfilled with smaller cores as it is truely custom design...and it saves time from Alexander as this tools tell him what to wind how. No endless parameter simultions necessary anymore for him.
Any lets be clear: I spend my money on Alexander's stuff as I tried A LOT before. So, am not associated with him, I am smply a paying, highly satisfied customer (...like Ale Bartola, DHTRob, Analog_SA and many others which are serious members of our community).
As Alexander said, I am experimenting with Chokes and transformers for many years. Hib, Amorphous, Nano, Normal Wire, OCC, Monolith, Lundahl, Alexanders etcetc.
My 5ct I learned:
- All the materials sound different. For chamber music etc where you want finest transitients and details,amorphous is the entry drug and nano has better tone and details. HIB sounds stiffer, but more like transistor / Hifi. Not as authentic.
- Rdc is very audible. But I believe there is a range of which sounds most authentic, not a rule like the lower the better.
Example: I used the same choke from Alexander with two coils, each 75ohm for my line stage. Is you use it serial with 150 ohm, ot sounds very slow, not very dynamic, not very transparent. In parallel: You get all the good stuff and have true life and dynamics and tone.
I did this experiments with many PSUs and applications even like for DHT heater supply etc. I as well tried to go lower and lower in RDdc, but my impression is that you loose warmth and tonal fundament when you overdo it. There is a correct value for your Amplifier and Supply and 20 to 35 ohm for HV is a good starting point.
- You want to experiment with (c)-LCLC: Sometime a small c (like 0.5uF) makes a nice improvement for HV. For LV (heater) and higher current, I prefer without the small C. Real CLC is not an option for me.
- Do not oversize the current design target, current clamps your cores together...to avoid any noise
- If possible, prefer a simple LC over LCLC, so try how much ripple you can stand where...depends on the stage and amplification factor etc.
I compared OPT, chokes and IT from Alexander (50AE) with Lundahl, Monolith (Nano IT 1:1), AE_Europe. Elektraprint, Hammond etc with the counterparts of Alexander. Alexanders's devices are many times oversized, much bigger , never get warm at all...and sound manytimes better than Lundahl (nocomparison) and are even slightly beter than Monolith, which sounds a bit sterile compared to Alexander's stuff.
Alexander developed a nice tool to deisgn the needed choke more or less by your self. So, you can simulate the effect of thicker wire, bigger cores on Rdc, flux density etcetc. Its awesome. That way I was able to design chokes to my real needs and use core or wire reserves for what I believe in (like not to high flux denisty, low rdc). That way you ofthen get your targets fulfilled with smaller cores as it is truely custom design...and it saves time from Alexander as this tools tell him what to wind how. No endless parameter simultions necessary anymore for him.
Any lets be clear: I spend my money on Alexander's stuff as I tried A LOT before. So, am not associated with him, I am smply a paying, highly satisfied customer (...like Ale Bartola, DHTRob, Analog_SA and many others which are serious members of our community).
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Thanks Blitz, this is the kind of information / response I have been looking for.
Have you tried a power supply with a 2 staged LC design: L1C1 --> B+ OPT, and L1C1L2C2 --> the IT for the driver tube? see schematic below. In my simple mind, the L2C2 will filter any noise coming from L1C1 and the output tube stage / OPT.
Have you tried a power supply with a 2 staged LC design: L1C1 --> B+ OPT, and L1C1L2C2 --> the IT for the driver tube? see schematic below. In my simple mind, the L2C2 will filter any noise coming from L1C1 and the output tube stage / OPT.
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Well, why not? Started that way.
I dont do this anymore...each stage has its own PSU now....
...i just wonder how much voltage swing you try to get and why / what comes next.
I would always try to avoid
-83...the worst sounding Mercury rectifier. Go 866. or rgn1064 mesh.
- avoid autobias, go fixed bias or sic biased
- challenge the 45 stage...one stage less will sound much better...how much amplification do u really need?
- if you go DHT, which I recommend, but only one stage, go for a very quiet filament supply.like rod colemans regs and yoi dontuse the artificial resistor pair at thecathode anymore...they destroy musical energy as well.
Each part is audible. So, use as few as possible but of highest quality. If you thoight a 6sn7 is linear...have. alook ar the curves of a 801a or rs242...try to avoid distortion where they will be generated
I dont do this anymore...each stage has its own PSU now....
...i just wonder how much voltage swing you try to get and why / what comes next.
I would always try to avoid
-83...the worst sounding Mercury rectifier. Go 866. or rgn1064 mesh.
- avoid autobias, go fixed bias or sic biased
- challenge the 45 stage...one stage less will sound much better...how much amplification do u really need?
- if you go DHT, which I recommend, but only one stage, go for a very quiet filament supply.like rod colemans regs and yoi dontuse the artificial resistor pair at thecathode anymore...they destroy musical energy as well.
Each part is audible. So, use as few as possible but of highest quality. If you thoight a 6sn7 is linear...have. alook ar the curves of a 801a or rs242...try to avoid distortion where they will be generated
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