John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part II

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In Stereophile I've seen some amps with no feedback and high distortion and lots of harmonics that decrease in amplitude with frequency. They often get great reviews and recently a reviewer called one the best amp he's ever heard. So, perhaps each of the harmonics are masking the higher one? Or perhaps it's just a matter of getting the overtones of the amp to sound non-offensive. Or both.

John

I believe that harmonics can indeed mask higher harmonic components.
But it's not so easy to draw conclusions from these listening reports - we should be carefull not to mix up 'sounds great, preferred' with 'provides the best transparent, un-doctored amplification'.

Disclaimer: although I believe there's a lot to be said for this approach, this is not my research - I am just wetting your appetite to the article by Ian Hegglun in the next Linear Audio. 😉 . Ian is a typical out-of-the-box thinker as demonstrated with his earlier square-law class A design.

jan
 
As far as the knock on 'The Radiotron Designer's Handbook' It was a true masterpiece for its time, from perhaps 1940-middle '50's. This book grew every year, and was a true industry 'bible'. I have never found such a complete book on audio design in the last many decades. Any recommendations, anybody?

Agreed John. I also would like to note that a lot of the confusion between rise time, time delay, phase shift, the non-exiting link between slew rate and ol bw, etc ad nauseatum is effectively debunked by the RDH. Having the book on your shelf isn't very helpfull in itself unless it is read and understood.
Highly recommended (see, we DO agree on something).

jan
 
What does this mean? '-)
 

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Positron said:
Really Tony. Might check out my White Papers.

SAS Audio Labs, amplifier preamplifier design problems

and the pages that follow.
Interesting mixture of engineering and woffle. For example (on Power Supplies and Capacitors)
It implies that the capacitors are of infinitely large value (infinite ufd.), has zero inductance and zero internal resistance. It also implies that the *DF and *DA (dissapation factor and dielectric absorption) are zero.
No, an infinite value cap (so zero impedance) could have non-zero DA but it would take for ever to measure it!
So what does this mean? Incorporating bad capacitors, with their high DA and DF percentages, means lack of true inner detail, the grunge and noise floor elevate, and smearing of the sound.
Pure FUD! Given that this is marketing disguised to look like engineering so that it convinces the uninitiated I suppose it is forgivable.

SY said:
You're confusing transit time with phase delay.
Yes, I agree - a common mistake. As jcx said, if you can compensate it away it is not a transit delay. Applying negative feedback to a circuit with a significant transit delay is very difficult because of instability. Note that when simply eyeballing an oscilloscope trace a forward path with a few low pass filters can look superficially similar to a real time delay so it can easily confuse some people.

john curl said:
However, to change something, you can only delay it, I should think.
Causality means you can't change the past, not that you can't change the present.
 
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Knowledge, experience, understanding. 😀

And the name of the “esoteric” school is?



Precisely.

You mix words from different languages.

And? How many pages and posts more will be needed for clearing (confusing) this up if responding in this way only? I am really disappointed by the attitude. Really.
Is it the high temperatures there and here?
Is it my low credentials?

George
 
No, it's that there's no need to repeat the basic information that's in every EE101 textbook- the differences between lead, lag, phase delay, group delay, and transit time and how they affect control systems. Besides, as I've said a few times before, Bruno Putzeys wrote a brilliantly clear exposition on basic feedback theory decimating the common misconceptions floating around fashion audio, and it's available for anyone to read; why rewrite it? I think it's also been rehashed multiple times in this thread, but there are people who love the tactic of waiting, then presenting the same flawed arguments again trusting that the audience has changed (The Duane Gish Effect).

25 degrees yesterday and breezy, so no problems with high temperatures.😀
 
=DF96;3124680]Interesting mixture of engineering and woffle. For example (on Power Supplies and Capacitors)

Cannot find woffle online. However, I suggest you also read "Picking Capacitors" by Walter Jung etc.

No, an infinite value cap (so zero impedance) could have non-zero DA but it would take for ever to measure it!

Sigh, ah no. A perfect capacitor would have no DA. Otherwise it is not a perfect capacitor.

DA causes a voltage to occur after signal change is stopped because electrons are freeing themselves from the insulation. (See also Picking Capacitors by Walter Jung.) A voltage occurs, and is measured in short order, over any given length/capacitance/foil length/width. As such the impedance would not be zero if a voltage occurs. So you are contradicting yourself.

By the way, folks, here is what I actually stated, regarding a perfect circuit. Notice the last sentence 96 left out.
It implies that the capacitors are of infinitely large value (infinite ufd.), has zero inductance and zero internal resistance. It also implies that the *DF and *DA (dissapation factor and dielectric absorption) are zero. In other words, the top of R1 is perfectly grounded, signal wise.
I then discuss real world circuits and parts.

Pure FUD! Given that this is marketing disguised to look like engineering so that it convinces the uninitiated I suppose it is forgivable.

Relax, others have made the same mistakes.

Cheers.
 
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Nope, and vast majority of amps are not close to 500khz bandwidth.

And 10-20us transit time is not an oscillation. It is the time it takes for the musical signal to "travel" from input to output. It has nothing to do with oscillations.

Cheers.

This is simply a nonsense concept, please read Bruno's article. In any case 20us is 144 degrees of phase at 20K and does not bode well for stability.

EDIT - I notice the point has been made, couldn't help the pun though.
 
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