John Curl's Blowtorch preamplifier part III

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Car crazy? An actual car vending machine! Really! Just south of town.
 

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The added *level* to the signal level is usually negligible, as long as HF parasitics are in concern, no ?
And, as a content of digital sources as well (brick wall filters), no ?
Now, if it is part of the signal itself (which mike ?) it ... is part of the signal, it is an other story. And we should worry about our tweeters.
Talking about head room, nothing to worry about this as long as you don't clip for any digital signal at 100%.
May-be we are not talking of the same thing, after all.

NOS means non-oversampling and means that there is no digital low-pass filter used. In addition, it means that very often no analog brickwall low-pass filter is used.
The 15 kHz - 20 kHz is part of the original record content while the 24.1 kHz - 29 kHz isn´t; instead it is part of the first mirror image that should be removed by a brickwall low-pass but isn´t.

Just an example what can happen....
 
NOS means non-oversampling
Thank-you, Jacob. Ah, this american disease to transform one word on two into an acronym !!!
Do not make-it easy for foreigners, believe-me.
But it was not at all the context of our discussion:

Awhile back D.Self did a test by injecting HF into PS and the THD DID increase on signal measured.
As HF harmonic distortion produces harmonics upper in the frequency range, which we are not supposed to can hear and that speakers will reject anyway because , usually, they do not produce any sound upper than 40KHz, don't you think it should be better to look at IM distortion in presence of HF components that can produce artifacts in the audible range ?
Yes. for sure.
though the tweeter cant reproduce it.. it does produce heat and offset.
-RNM
And eats headroom that may lead to clipping and thus to more distortion over the whole frequency band.

As you see, no question of NOS here. And my answer was taking into account the PSSR (an other acronym ;-) of amplifiers circuits

Anyway, who could use a DA converter without rejecting the sampling frequency, aliasing at work ?

A big misunderstanding, as i supposed.
 
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Better than -160 dB re 1 volt RMS

I looked at the test maybe I'm wrong as usual but the usual DNR problem with distortion is absent. The input stimulus sees the attenuation of 600 Ohms against the contact resistance while the distortion is 100% caused by the relay. This should be easy to measure to -180dB (1nV) with a pre-amp, long FFT's and lots of averaging.
 
I looked at the test maybe I'm wrong as usual but the usual DNR problem with distortion is absent. The input stimulus sees the attenuation of 600 Ohms against the contact resistance while the distortion is 100% caused by the relay. This should be easy to measure to -180dB (1nV) with a pre-amp, long FFT's and lots of averaging.

I just looked across the relay contacts and used a ribbon microphone step up transformer. Distortion range varied from my 8K sample noise limit to 48 dB above that.

Now with relay prices about the same which one would you use?

Signal level from the source was 10 mV RMS at 3,000 hertz. Load was 10,000 ohms.
 
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Why do you need a relay?

The next question would be to compare top of the line relay switching versus straight mechanical switches.

Now quad bifurcated gold/palladium crossbar contacts are the best. There are a few switches built like that. But noted by their absence in modern audio gear. About all that you might see are Shalco silver switches.

A remote control motor can be fitted to the Shalco switches but very hard to beat relays for remote control of inputs and volume.

So far have only tested a few actual rotary switches. My old cheap favorite turned out to be horrible. Sort of the reason I started looking at a method to measure contact issues. Of course all connectors, switches etc. are poifekt...
 
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Of course I like Shallco switches best, but it will be interesting what you find Ed, with the bifurcated relays. The problem with Shallco switches is that they can tarnish and have to be wiped occasionally just to be sure. Then, of course, there is the remote control problem. Relays are much easier, obviously.
 
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