Hi Alan,
I know the Grohl Neve was the last of the all discrete models. I mentioned that to remind some of how some musicians will go to huge lengths to get a certain 'sound'. Possible same reason studio 1 at AIR is liked by some 🙂
I know the Grohl Neve was the last of the all discrete models. I mentioned that to remind some of how some musicians will go to huge lengths to get a certain 'sound'. Possible same reason studio 1 at AIR is liked by some 🙂
Based on the sound quality of several Foo Fighters records, I’m not so sure it’s a sound worth pursuing...
Maybe it was ruined in post, though.
Maybe it was ruined in post, though.
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Yes, this is one of the options.
Another one, widely supported, is the F5T over at the Pass Labs forum. I was reluctant to mention it in JC's thread. 🙂
Double that for mix down/mastering, throw in a few more for reverb and/or miscellaneous effects, and my wild guess of 20 (in serie) is not that far off. 🙂
I only bought this for study...this would be a modern mic preamp in a very well sold kinda cheap professional recording sound card(production -2016)... transistor input(bipolar) preamp with soft saturation to prevent the adc input clipping as the manufacturer said on his official page, ne5532 at the output...Looking at countless reviews, giving it for review to my friends who also have 2 small recording studios for more than a decade now...they all seem to be very happy with the sound...and Amazon's sales tells a lot about the perceived quality of this thing. I don't know what you say, but i've seen a few posts about the fact that TI improved the ne5534 die and that new ne5534 is better than the original. All the statements i see here about ne5534 are based on the original ne5534. If you think that they were better than the new ones...I might have a few good original Signetics AN, dip and smd 🙂
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How can-we discuss of the "sound" of an NE5534, if we are not talking of the same device ? All I had said about the 5532 was about the original Signetics.
About caps: They are everywhere, in all the desks I know, to avoid any noise of commutation.
About VCA. Oh lord, what awfull sounding they had (Automated process & such). Reason why Rupert Neve invented the expensive and complicated flying faders to get rid of them.
About Neve, most of the ones I saw inside (So, expensive, never had one on my own) were based on discrete components, if I remember well.
Attached, a typical mic input of an average studio mixing desk, and some schematics from NEVE.
https://www.technicalaudio.com/neve/neve_pdf/1073-fullpak.pdf
It was right at this time J.C. But, for now, there are so many fantastic sounding OPAs on the market that It should be stupid to go discreet. If I had one mixing desk to design today (What a nightmare), I would use one of those very low distortion+noise VFA, high speed ones, in the slides, discrete buffered in an overkill way for the outputs (or, better, some THS6012) and CFAs for the busses. Thinking of this, in fact, no. I would go digital as much as I can. Signal integrity in the transport first. ;-)
My personal preamp is totally OPAs based. And it is a choice of quality, not economy. I used a Rotel RC850 preamp, changed the potentiometer for a 24 steps commutator with metal film resistances, changed integrated circuits, modded the power supply, added bigger good lytics+film caps at the power pins of each of the ICs. I made a lot of listening comparisons at this time, like strait wires VS the preamp: Found no audible differences, totally satisfied since decades. Will not change-it for anything else in the world appart ... full digital.
I know the Amek for a decade or so.Good design.It also have a great eq, i heard.but the cheaper Mackie vlz1604 and Soundcraft spirit folio did a better job with lower parts count.
It was funny enough that a Mackie touring mixer became a recording studio favourite up until the Mackie Onix derived from the vlz has the best sales for 2 channel preamps even today, 30 years later.
It was the only way for Mackie to compete Behringer , to strip down all unnecessary parts, keep the original input preamp and sell it.
It was funny enough that a Mackie touring mixer became a recording studio favourite up until the Mackie Onix derived from the vlz has the best sales for 2 channel preamps even today, 30 years later.
It was the only way for Mackie to compete Behringer , to strip down all unnecessary parts, keep the original input preamp and sell it.
Hello dreamth - I picked up a beautiful old Pioneer SX1000-TA Receiver today. You don't happen to have a schematic for it do you?
There were probably no new designs, everything has gone system on a chip. The die was also huge and fairly costly for the function. My favorite design was an entire line of CAT scanners at GE. Last I looked there is a 128 channel CMOS CT front end in a special glass package with integral ribbon cable.
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Looked into these 2 op-amps i would have wanted to talk about the fet buffering as i kinda know what good they really are doing there, but then I i just realized something outlined by Arto Kolinummi which is never associated or discussed in depth when comparing bipolar cascode with j-fet cascode ,which is that fet cascode is essentially a bootstrapped cascode providing automatic gain control or local feedback(not very powerful, but good enough) vs the higher gain of a bipolar cascode which needs the global feedback to act upon but it's also feeding it.
PIONEER SX-1000 TA AM-FM STEREO RECEIVER SCH Service Manual download, schematics, eeprom, repair info for electronics experts
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Looked into these 2 op-amps i would have wanted to talk about the fet buffering as i kinda know what good they really are doing there, but then I i just realized something outlined by Arto Kolinummi which is never associated or discussed in depth when comparing bipolar cascode with j-fet cascode ,which is that fet cascode is essentially a bootstrapped cascode providing automatic gain control or local feedback(not very powerful, but good enough) vs the higher gain of a bipolar cascode which needs the global feedback to act upon but it's also feeding it.
It's on Electrotanya, the Hungarian site, just google...:
PIONEER SX-1000 TA AM-FM STEREO RECEIVER SCH Service Manual download, schematics, eeprom, repair info for electronics experts
Indeed, i used to fix Siemens x-ray equipment with some of those chips, quite expensive though...
As in that documentary about the IP...the Asians aren't just copycats, they always improved something taken from the west.20 years ago it was called the Theory of complexity as a key to Japanese development .They are the guys who used to spend 6 months forging a sword...but that sword can cut the rifle barrel...
I saw many complex audio amp schematics done in the west, none of them inspired me , but the west is better at synthesis , never at complex modelling.The Japanese were the masters of complexity, that knowledge was transferred to chinese at first then came back to Japan in a different form with the aid of the americans and europeans and then the asian influx in the west made possible a real leap where both synthesis and analytics were put together.
I often make this parallel between european boxing and asian martial arts. Asians were very good at deconstructing and reconstructing systems in a different way so their martial arts are very complex.At first , the japanese took from the chinese the simplest straightforward techniques ignoring the essential.When they met the europeans and americans they found out something that was a big problem for their fighters.There was no defence against the simple right or left hook as the simple boxing technique was already the essence of the chinese YinYang model without even knowing that model.The human body is not moving straight forward, but in arches.
So they needed to get back in contact with the much underrated Chinese culture and relearn their own systems in a different way.So it happened that the Europeans and Americans were able to put Asia together .
Scott, could-you, one of this days, if you have both the time and the courage, describe us the process to produce an integrated circuit, from design to production ?
It is something mysterious, I believe, for many of us. At least, for me.
Do you prototype with discrete components ? How do you design the die ?
Do you prototype the Die, and, if yes, how many copies ? Can-you make some changes on them on the bench ? etc.
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