Trough time has some great engineers made amplifiers that stood out, amplifiers that raised eyebrows because of how better they were.
But are they still special today, do they still deliver something above the rest?
I do know some say it can be argued that every non defect solid state amplifier sounds completely the same., but let's ignore that and just follow the hype.
Is there some with still available schematic and pictures of PCB that is still clearly worthwhile to make?
But are they still special today, do they still deliver something above the rest?
I do know some say it can be argued that every non defect solid state amplifier sounds completely the same., but let's ignore that and just follow the hype.
Is there some with still available schematic and pictures of PCB that is still clearly worthwhile to make?
Before any comparison, you need to declare your weighting function - what aspects are most important to you...
For instance I'd place compactness, high efficiency, low price per watt as great things to have - an amp that's a cubic inch or two, several 100W, and fanless would impress me (<=0.001% THD, eff>=96% sort of performance) - but then I followed the little-box challenge avidly! 🙂
I'd also be impressed by a non-class-D high performance amp using only low-spec jelly-bean components, nothing exotic or hard-to-source, using topology and clever tricks to future-proof the BoM. More from less, perhaps, is what impresses in a design. For me class A is right out, consigned to history, an aberation, belongs in a museum with the cord cut off...
For instance I'd place compactness, high efficiency, low price per watt as great things to have - an amp that's a cubic inch or two, several 100W, and fanless would impress me (<=0.001% THD, eff>=96% sort of performance) - but then I followed the little-box challenge avidly! 🙂
I'd also be impressed by a non-class-D high performance amp using only low-spec jelly-bean components, nothing exotic or hard-to-source, using topology and clever tricks to future-proof the BoM. More from less, perhaps, is what impresses in a design. For me class A is right out, consigned to history, an aberation, belongs in a museum with the cord cut off...
If searched for something in a particular category, like most warm sounding class D, but I was more interested in if a Hi-Fi historian had to point out milestones trough history, what names would he write, how would they compare to what we have today?
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In my view, most of what we make on this forum is not far off being industrial archeology. The future (it's here today) is Class D, the quality of the stuff is already good enough and it's everywhere and affordable. But it's hard to design and build and mostly it's about dressing up a chip. So for fun, we build other stuff like Class A, Class AB and sometimes with tubes too. I even designed and built a Class ABC amplifier.
Most of the old stuff is not that good, the parts and materials have improved an awful lot since those days, especially capacitors. The old designs had to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of old materials and components and as such are not necessarily optimal today or may not take advantage of the parts we can obtain now.
Speakers have similarly improved.
my 2c: yes, the old stuff is worthwhile to make because there is a lot of fun in exploring the history behind them, the designs are proven and weaknesses known so they can be corrected if you want to, they are often simple and a good place for beginners.
Most of the old stuff is not that good, the parts and materials have improved an awful lot since those days, especially capacitors. The old designs had to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of old materials and components and as such are not necessarily optimal today or may not take advantage of the parts we can obtain now.
Speakers have similarly improved.
my 2c: yes, the old stuff is worthwhile to make because there is a lot of fun in exploring the history behind them, the designs are proven and weaknesses known so they can be corrected if you want to, they are often simple and a good place for beginners.
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If you are worried about electrical consumption, then get a solar array like I did. Class A, guilt free.
Old designs with newer better parts - what's not to like? Just watch our for the DC SOA's of some of the new switching transistors....
Old designs with newer better parts - what's not to like? Just watch our for the DC SOA's of some of the new switching transistors....
Let's say I would build one of the bigger solid state 25W power amps from the "good old days" to drive whatever I may build of speakers, I could of course get 5-10 components and solder them together, but I imagine that there would be better solutions out here, maybe even amplifiers that was considered amazing?
Considering that, in my area, an electric space heater of 1000/1500 watts AC draw, when used for an hour, runs up my electric bill about 17 cents.
I'm surely not concerned about the propogandized "energy crisis" when I'm enjoying my music.
17 cents!? I’ll have to sell a limb! Im with Nelson on the solar array, plus they can’t turn my power off! For the amount of time I listen to my SE tube amp I dont worry about efficiency. Some of the better old amps were tube. A lot of the negatives like noise and distortion were a result of older parts like carbon comp resistors and the new metal film resistors can make a really good amp that has none of that noise. Lots of the negatives are no longer a worry and the design is what matters. Amps like the old Tigersaurus are examples of great sounding old amps along with stuff that Nelson designed. Look into doing something like that.
Ya know, I don't get the hype about certain resistors generating noise that is objectionable.
I've built several tube amps - in a classic style - with 1/2W carbon comp resistors. (KOA Speer)
The EL84 tube amp in my main system when idle, results in no hum of noise, because putting my ear right up to the speakers I can barely, if at all, detect any hiss.
Certainly not an issue sitting 14 feet away on the sofa enjoying music.
You mean a 300B vacuum triode - first introduced in 1938, intended to amplify low-fi telephone signals with a 300 Hz - 3 kHz bandwidth - operating in class A, isn't the pinnacle of all audio electronics design?
Why, I'm shocked! 😉
And 300B's are such a bargain, too. You can get a new-production one for a mere $700 USD. (See attached screen capture.)
A 300B is great at that, too. Triple-bag it in three Ziplock (TM) bags, whack it thoroughly with a hammer until reduced to powder, and it will fit nicely in a cubic inch (or two). 😀
-Gnobuddy
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I have tried to search here on DIY, but I get 50,000 results where one of the word may have been used.
Do any of you know of threads that are about a power / pre amplifier that has gotten good reviews?
Do any of you know of threads that are about a power / pre amplifier that has gotten good reviews?
No QUAD current-dumping amplifier?
"Current dumping" seemed to set Wireless World readers on fire for a while, with hot debates as to whether it really did constitute feed-forward, or merely a slightly unusual form of feedback. Most arguments came from people without the ability to solve the balance equation of an AC bridge with some reactive elements, so went nowhere except round and round.
Silly arguments aside, the Quad 405 set some very respectable objective benchmarks (the only ones that count).
I was a kid when Quad released the 405, and only read about the design fifteen years later, in old back-issues of Wireless World, in a dusty corner of my university library.
-Gnobuddy
No Quad current-dumper?
"Current dumping" seemed to set Wireless World readers on fire for a while, with hot debates as to whether it really did constitute feed-forward, or merely a slightly unusual form of feedback. Most arguments came from people without the ability to solve the balance equation of an AC bridge with some reactive elements, so went nowhere except round and round.
Silly arguments aside, the Quad 405 set some very respectable objective benchmarks (the only ones that count).
I was a kid when Quad released the 405, and only read about the design fifteen years later, in old back-issues of Wireless World, in a dusty corner of my university library.
-Gnobuddy
Nope, Quad current-dumper just doesn't intrigue or excite me. But please feel free to build one yourself! Use the money you didn't spend on the Levinson and Threshold amps, to purchase components and a beautiful chassis.
Harmon Kardon made some very nice amps, and receivers through the years, even some of their japanese-built offerings which are coveted today.
The low-powered sweet-singing 330 Nocturne series is my one favorite, along with their beefy Citation 12 Deluxe.
The low-powered sweet-singing 330 Nocturne series is my one favorite, along with their beefy Citation 12 Deluxe.
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There must be a gazillian web pages on this topic, years and years worth of reviews and articles, so a few threads on this forum is going to amount to a pimple on an elephants ear. Surely you don’t need spoon feeding on this topic, a google search will keep you busy almost indefinitely.
p.s. There‘s a long running thread around here somewhere on Naim clones you can build, another on Goldmund, almost anything on the Pass forum…
Very well put.
Not just on this forum, either. Almost every area of technology (not just electronics) has advanced far beyond the point where untrained dabblers (i.e., amateur enthusiasts like us) can approach anywhere near the cutting edge. Usually, what we can do is decades - or centuries - behind the state of the art.
That doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Human civilization will not be advanced, but our own knowledge and experience can be. And using your time for anything constructive is a vast improvement over the sordid time-sinks of Facebook, Tik-Tok, Twitter, and other similar garbage. In a world where everyone is more consumer than creator, any tilt in the other direction, however small, is a win.
-Gnobuddy
Plenty of diyAudio members have built their own audio equipment, and discovered that it sounds better / gives them greater listening pleasure, than anything they'd ever heard before -- at any price. To those folks, applying their own personal judgment criteria, home built gear IS the state of the art.
Greater pleasure, sure. There is satisfaction in DIY. If you make nothing at all for yourself, ever, you are a helpless consumer, and most people don't enjoy being entirely helpless. The journey from infancy to adulthood is largely about finding ways to become less helpless.
Sounds better, maybe. We are not objective creatures. Usually "our" speakers or amplifiers sound better, for the same reason our babies seem prettier than everyone else's.
State of the art? One online dictionary defines "state of the art" as follows:
So no, recreating vintage designs with obsolete parts and obsolete construction techniques is not state of the art, any more than participating in a Renaissance fair or medieval weekend is.
Loudspeakers and listening rooms are the last remaining stages in the audio playback chain that still have audible imperfections. Therefore, in principle, we can DIY better speakers than the ones we can buy, particularly since most affordable commercially available consumer-grade speakers are quite horrid.
In practice, without precision measurement microphones, anechoic chambers, and large numbers of human subjects with good ears to audition our creations, give us feedback, and keep us honest, it is very unlikely we can create a DIY speaker that matches or exceeds good commercial ones. A pair of 25-year-old Mackie HR824s, for instance.
What we usually can do with speakers, is build something than we could buy new for the same money. Just the other day, I mounted a pair of $15 Visaton FR10-4 full-rangers into a pair of identical thick-walled Styrofoam boxes retrieved from the recyling bin outside the Biology lab. I even measured the internal volume, entered the manufacturer-provided Thiele-Small parameters into Qspeakers (woofer box design software), and found a port tuning that provided a nice flat extended bass response - on paper. Then I fabricated the ports using thin-wall brass tubing found at the local hardware store.
My new Styrofoam-enclosure speakers are most definitely not state of the art. They are not Hi-Fi, either, by any reasonable definition. But they are better than the speakers in the TV - much better.
Yes, that "build" was satisfying. 🙂
-Gnobuddy
Sounds better, maybe. We are not objective creatures. Usually "our" speakers or amplifiers sound better, for the same reason our babies seem prettier than everyone else's.
State of the art? One online dictionary defines "state of the art" as follows:
So no, recreating vintage designs with obsolete parts and obsolete construction techniques is not state of the art, any more than participating in a Renaissance fair or medieval weekend is.
Loudspeakers and listening rooms are the last remaining stages in the audio playback chain that still have audible imperfections. Therefore, in principle, we can DIY better speakers than the ones we can buy, particularly since most affordable commercially available consumer-grade speakers are quite horrid.
In practice, without precision measurement microphones, anechoic chambers, and large numbers of human subjects with good ears to audition our creations, give us feedback, and keep us honest, it is very unlikely we can create a DIY speaker that matches or exceeds good commercial ones. A pair of 25-year-old Mackie HR824s, for instance.
What we usually can do with speakers, is build something than we could buy new for the same money. Just the other day, I mounted a pair of $15 Visaton FR10-4 full-rangers into a pair of identical thick-walled Styrofoam boxes retrieved from the recyling bin outside the Biology lab. I even measured the internal volume, entered the manufacturer-provided Thiele-Small parameters into Qspeakers (woofer box design software), and found a port tuning that provided a nice flat extended bass response - on paper. Then I fabricated the ports using thin-wall brass tubing found at the local hardware store.
My new Styrofoam-enclosure speakers are most definitely not state of the art. They are not Hi-Fi, either, by any reasonable definition. But they are better than the speakers in the TV - much better.
Yes, that "build" was satisfying. 🙂
-Gnobuddy