With these bloody " noisey / slow " diodes I have SNR over 120 dB and I hear nothing with ear on tweeter. Do you mean, that is neccessary to hear " silence quadrat " ? 😉
Anthony, I'm not P. Dirac. In every time I can explanation, but I don't like " only one way explanation ", claimed with postcoital smile, which aren't explanation.
Gaucho said:
To be honest, I'm not quite sure. I've heard it number of times and in slightly diff. versions, but I have to do my homework regarding where it originates from.
Upupa Epops said:
Are you saying that if there is no signal and there is no noise coming out of your amp, that means the amp does not have distortions at a certain level. I bet you if you turn the amp off you'll get even better than 120dB SNR. I think the dynamic process of charging/discharging the PS caps (presence of a signal) matters more. No one I've heard of claims that the amp is noisier with regular diodes. And don't start giving THD figures of amps with regular diodes. I don't think that would characterize the way the amp would sound. I'm using regular bridge rectifier right now and look forward to try fast/soft recovery diodes.
My point is if it doesn't make any diff. to you, just be happy that you can use chipo parts. I personally cant find any diff. in the sound of diff. resistors and use normal quality inexpensive ones. That doesn't mean people shouldn't implement higher quality parts, or they are stupid if they do. If they can justify it by all means.
Greg
Upupa Epops said:
Yo are not.And I'm also not P.Dirak. 🙂
Do we have free of speech here? What made you so upset? Did you take all personally? 🙂 .For me it is hobby,it is fun,tell you truth I don't care a lot about diodes,but I like to do it to make some expirement nad new challenge. I'm not disagree with you about you've got -120db on you PSU.But it doesn't mean if you claim it,here is no place just for damn simple probe🙂.You are not a God,did you?Now I know at least you are not P.Dirak🙂.
GregGC said:
😎
GregGC said:
Absolutely.
As long as nobody tells me to try cable lifters...😀 😀 😀
Greg, all this cause is unhappy. It is based commonly on disadvantages of integrated amps, which have in 99 % case common rails for all stages and they are from this reason more sensitive on " quality " of rail voltage. But ( and not all people know it ) quite the same problems can cause uncorrect grounding and design of PS commonly.
Upupa Epops said:
I guess you have a postcoital smile when the system sounds really good.
When you listen to music compulsively.
Yes, it's a one-way explanation: it sounds gorgeous.😎
RCBandwidth said:
Yes,I agree with you.
But hi-end is business of small improvements🙂.My system is already sounding very good,what I looking for now is small improvements.Here can be no revolution.May diodes can make small improvement.May be not .I don't know. That is I like to find out.
Upupa Epops said:
Sounds very reasonable to me. I think you are right and I don't disregard it. My $400 receiver has the same problem looking at the schematic and it doesn't sound as goo as the
GC. At the same time I'd rather take care of the PS than trash the GC and come up with a lot more complicated amp design. Not that that's a bad thing, it's just that I'd rather improve the simple GC that definitely has a lot of potentials if done right.
See, we can actually have an intelligent conversation and learn from each others experience instead of putting one another down. I like that and I'm open to suggestions.
Greg
Upupa Epops said:
You are absolutely right, and I've been helping members here to make a good grounding arragement for quite some time.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=189623#post189623
Upupa Epops said:
I've used the PSRR arguement before and have nothing against objective specs. Having been on your side of the arguement for a number of years I understand that it seems intuitive that very high PSRR will likely marginalize the sonic effect of superior diodes. Your ears however will tell you otherwise...if you'd bother to try them.
I detect hypocrisy and I don't even have that meter on my test bench! ~ If you have gone to all the effort to make an amp with an 120dB SNR which "should" far far surpass any threshold of human perception and where your further objective advances beyond the threshold of that perception have already long become pointless, then why stop there and put in less then state-of-the-art diodes? I bet you could have built an amp with an 119dB SNR and saved a couple of bucks in other areas too!😉 After all you couldn't actually hear it right? 😀
If specs could tell one how an amp will sound it would be a great revelation! But objective specs fail miserably to tell us why different amplifiers (even the 'blameless' ultra-low distortion ones)with the same or very simliar specs sound quite different.
Re: Irrational conclusion
That won't help. Try not using them and soldering them in where you must use them. And don't use switches or push on connectors.
Now you're just being facile.
In the world of rigging mobile stage PA there are tables for mains cable CSA v length so as to achieve an optimum source impedance. The same is applied to studios with powerful monitoring. It's all straight forward stuff. I applied it to my HiFi as do many people with high power, and even low power equipment. I recommend it to all my friends and customers before they start spending money upgrading anything else.
Amplifiers draw their current on only a few % of the sine wave, namely on the peaks. Powerful domestic or studio amplifiers drawing an average current of only a few amps can be in reality drawing as much as 100 amps on the peaks. It follows therefore that unless the mains supply is a 100A one then some degradation may result.
Old knowledge, but not to a newbie like you, and sound design principals. They keep these secrets in books. I've known about this type of thing since the early eighties. Some years ago HiFi News and record review, a UK magazine, published a series of articles by Ben Duncan called 'The Super Spur Project'. I suggest you look them up.
As far as sound quality of HiFi systems, or even middle of the road Fidelity, basic quality mains supply is the one of the cheapest and most effective upgrades that can be made. And I don't refer to the ridiculous money grabbing con trick snake oil so called upgrades that exist to relieve the ignorant masses of their hard earned.
Just large mains cables, low contact resistance = low source impedance. Simple, cheap. Staggering difference.
Mainly to the treble and mid rather than the bass. The width and depth of imaging, separation of instruments in complex music. The tonal quality and naturalness of the sound. And if you have a bigger system, impressive weight, slam, speed.
It helps to 'remove' the hardware and let the music flow through.
As far as these hexfreds and shottkeys go, they tend to not have the spikes and ringing on reverse recovery that 'ordinary' diodes exibit. This high frequency noise seems to be able to break through even some regulators. People have said they find blacker background occurs when using them, making the music more apparent. There is a graph in the Michael Percy pdf catalogue which may be from Internatinal Rectifier which illustrates the spiking.
RCBandwidth said:
That won't help. Try not using them and soldering them in where you must use them. And don't use switches or push on connectors.
Now you're just being facile.
In the world of rigging mobile stage PA there are tables for mains cable CSA v length so as to achieve an optimum source impedance. The same is applied to studios with powerful monitoring. It's all straight forward stuff. I applied it to my HiFi as do many people with high power, and even low power equipment. I recommend it to all my friends and customers before they start spending money upgrading anything else.
Amplifiers draw their current on only a few % of the sine wave, namely on the peaks. Powerful domestic or studio amplifiers drawing an average current of only a few amps can be in reality drawing as much as 100 amps on the peaks. It follows therefore that unless the mains supply is a 100A one then some degradation may result.
Old knowledge, but not to a newbie like you, and sound design principals. They keep these secrets in books. I've known about this type of thing since the early eighties. Some years ago HiFi News and record review, a UK magazine, published a series of articles by Ben Duncan called 'The Super Spur Project'. I suggest you look them up.
As far as sound quality of HiFi systems, or even middle of the road Fidelity, basic quality mains supply is the one of the cheapest and most effective upgrades that can be made. And I don't refer to the ridiculous money grabbing con trick snake oil so called upgrades that exist to relieve the ignorant masses of their hard earned.
Just large mains cables, low contact resistance = low source impedance. Simple, cheap. Staggering difference.
Mainly to the treble and mid rather than the bass. The width and depth of imaging, separation of instruments in complex music. The tonal quality and naturalness of the sound. And if you have a bigger system, impressive weight, slam, speed.
It helps to 'remove' the hardware and let the music flow through.
As far as these hexfreds and shottkeys go, they tend to not have the spikes and ringing on reverse recovery that 'ordinary' diodes exibit. This high frequency noise seems to be able to break through even some regulators. People have said they find blacker background occurs when using them, making the music more apparent. There is a graph in the Michael Percy pdf catalogue which may be from Internatinal Rectifier which illustrates the spiking.
Re: Re: Irrational conclusion
Amen.
One thing I always do is to solder the plugs to the wire.
I refuse myself to squeeze nude copper to a stinkin' hole and screw it.
Be it interconnects, speaker wire or mains, solder it is.😉
I don't like the feeling of screwing and smashing a multi-strand mains copper cable to the plug.
Copper oxidates, the contact is not perfect, it's a mess.
I also tend to avoid mains plugs on gear.
ISO plugs tend to relax their contacts (on the female), and those figure-of-eight plugs are even worse.
For me, the cable is soldered directly to the trafo and isolated.
Call me nuts, but intermitent or less than perfect contacts with mains is not a nice dream would like to have.
I even change mains plugs and switches on the house at the first signs of malfunction.
IanAS said:
Amen.
One thing I always do is to solder the plugs to the wire.
I refuse myself to squeeze nude copper to a stinkin' hole and screw it.
Be it interconnects, speaker wire or mains, solder it is.😉
I don't like the feeling of screwing and smashing a multi-strand mains copper cable to the plug.
Copper oxidates, the contact is not perfect, it's a mess.
I also tend to avoid mains plugs on gear.
ISO plugs tend to relax their contacts (on the female), and those figure-of-eight plugs are even worse.
For me, the cable is soldered directly to the trafo and isolated.
Call me nuts, but intermitent or less than perfect contacts with mains is not a nice dream would like to have.
I even change mains plugs and switches on the house at the first signs of malfunction.
Mains is main
Captive leads, the way to go for sure. Even with a 10mm2 mains cable hanging out the back, though that is rather awkward.
If you know the difference between a metal film and a Vishay, then missing out a phono plug and socket is similar to that difference.
Captive leads, the way to go for sure. Even with a 10mm2 mains cable hanging out the back, though that is rather awkward.If you know the difference between a metal film and a Vishay, then missing out a phono plug and socket is similar to that difference.
Like this: http://www.rtoc.org/library/file.asp?id=18504 
I appologise in advance for the double adapters. The treble one even has a fuse that I know is a slight degradation. 😱 Only temporary though. As is the the 1000VA Tx, I happen to find the 12-0-12 secondaries sounded rather good with the digital supply. The upper Tx is a one off prototype I had made for the analogue supply. All the Tx I've tried there sound a lot different from one another. At present I only have shottkeys on the digital supply. Not much difference really at the time. The same cannot be said for the earthing on the digital board. Under it are 1.6mm diameter copper rods, wow what an improvement that was, compared to the etched tracks. The interconnects are solid silver in Teflon.
You can see (or perhaps not, bit fuzzy photo) my AD847's in the subtractor stage after the SAA7350 bitstream DAC and 797's in the output. I had the OPA627 there, nooo, horrible. But I plan to pop them back in but this time with the 1k8 to -ve rail. And change the black gate F's to SEP. There are quite a few 'things to do' to this Philips 960 yet. One day I may get around to them. Or maybe just use my PC instead via a USB to SPDIF converter to drive the DAC.
The cardboard box at upper left contains a pair of Shallco 48 way switches with their silver contacts and 0.002 Ohms contact resistance. I only have one volume setting achieved with a pair of Vishays soldered into the silver leads at the amp end. Maybe I will try moving them and adding some more to the shallco and using a line driver.
But I don't want to make the sound worse by introducing another Op-amp to the signal path. Which is why this is such an interesting thread to me. One volume setting is becoming a problem, was OK as a test rig for the last few years, but I more often want to enjoy some relaxing background music now 🙂
How does the BUF634 compare to the BUF04?
I appologise in advance for the double adapters. The treble one even has a fuse that I know is a slight degradation. 😱 Only temporary though. As is the the 1000VA Tx, I happen to find the 12-0-12 secondaries sounded rather good with the digital supply. The upper Tx is a one off prototype I had made for the analogue supply. All the Tx I've tried there sound a lot different from one another. At present I only have shottkeys on the digital supply. Not much difference really at the time. The same cannot be said for the earthing on the digital board. Under it are 1.6mm diameter copper rods, wow what an improvement that was, compared to the etched tracks. The interconnects are solid silver in Teflon.You can see (or perhaps not, bit fuzzy photo) my AD847's in the subtractor stage after the SAA7350 bitstream DAC and 797's in the output. I had the OPA627 there, nooo, horrible. But I plan to pop them back in but this time with the 1k8 to -ve rail. And change the black gate F's to SEP. There are quite a few 'things to do' to this Philips 960 yet. One day I may get around to them. Or maybe just use my PC instead via a USB to SPDIF converter to drive the DAC.
The cardboard box at upper left contains a pair of Shallco 48 way switches with their silver contacts and 0.002 Ohms contact resistance. I only have one volume setting achieved with a pair of Vishays soldered into the silver leads at the amp end. Maybe I will try moving them and adding some more to the shallco and using a line driver.
But I don't want to make the sound worse by introducing another Op-amp to the signal path. Which is why this is such an interesting thread to me. One volume setting is becoming a problem, was OK as a test rig for the last few years, but I more often want to enjoy some relaxing background music now 🙂
How does the BUF634 compare to the BUF04?
IanAS said:
Wow, what a health hazard! My favourite kind of hi-fi setup for sure 😀
I find this diode debate a little off-topic, but as it's well under way I'll throw in my limited experience: schottky diodes in cd player are THE WAY FORWARD! Compared to originals they give a much smoother, sweeter top end. And that's that 😉 The difference in some ways is like running things off isolation transformers - a less forced presentation.
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