Just a reflexion: Andrea talked about taste and replacing opamps. This is like talking about how good "surströmming" is to a person that either haven't tasted it nor will.
BTW: Surströmming is yummie, once a year at least
Surströmming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Surstromming--One of the World's Strangest Dishes
Surstrmming - fermented Baltic herring
I imagine that is something you would have to experience.
Bork, bork, bork, bork😀Just a reflexion: Andrea talked about taste and replacing opamps. This is like talking about how good "surströmming" is to a person that either haven't tasted it nor will.
BTW: Surströmming is yummie, once a year at least
Surströmming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Surstromming--One of the World's Strangest Dishes
Surstrmming - fermented Baltic herring
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Sorry. I m not an expert. Can i ask to you ?
i have two opamp RC4588 in my Denon CD, can i use two LME49860 in upgrade ?
Need a different scheme around it ?
i have two opamp RC4588 in my Denon CD, can i use two LME49860 in upgrade ?
Need a different scheme around it ?
The NE5534 is dead
Just a reminder to everyone, the Texas Instruments NE5534 and NE5532 are ABSOLUTE GARBAGE 😡. I have been literally kicked out of the recording studio after doing repairs with these parts. Noisy and trashy sounding at the best.
The proof the TI NE5534 has no relation to the Signetics NE5534 was in a product I worked on a few years ago that broke some rules. The design applied DC/AC to the compensation pins 5, 8 to shift the bias in the op-amp. The TI parts latched up whereas the Signetics parts worked fine.
When I contacted TI engineering, their reply was it's not exactly the same part but it meets the specs and is thus considered equivalent. The original NE5534 used some older IC fabrication techniques that is too expensive to continue.
I haven't tried these other manufacturers:
On-Semi, New Japan Radio NJM5534 (they sounded blah)
Be careful about the manufacturers of these multi-sourced parts.
Just a reminder to everyone, the Texas Instruments NE5534 and NE5532 are ABSOLUTE GARBAGE 😡. I have been literally kicked out of the recording studio after doing repairs with these parts. Noisy and trashy sounding at the best.
The proof the TI NE5534 has no relation to the Signetics NE5534 was in a product I worked on a few years ago that broke some rules. The design applied DC/AC to the compensation pins 5, 8 to shift the bias in the op-amp. The TI parts latched up whereas the Signetics parts worked fine.
When I contacted TI engineering, their reply was it's not exactly the same part but it meets the specs and is thus considered equivalent. The original NE5534 used some older IC fabrication techniques that is too expensive to continue.
I haven't tried these other manufacturers:
On-Semi, New Japan Radio NJM5534 (they sounded blah)
Be careful about the manufacturers of these multi-sourced parts.
You could actually change the NE5534 to something similar and hopefully better. If the opamps are noisy as you put it, are you sure that the opamps is the cause of that?
I had a similar expirence when I replaced all of the opamps in my fostex 454.
they worked fine in the signal path but turned the filters into vfo's and also some actualy worked in the filter sections but didn't sound consistent per section.
So I just used TL082's thourghout and it sounded way better than original stock.
It was as clean as my mackie 32-8.
Another time i was building a preamp or fuzzbox or something for my giutar or something and it failed miserably.Popped in a trusty TL082 and it worked prefectly with no changes.
After some research I found that it had something to do with bias current and had to be figured into the design, like ,to high of value in the feedback and it won't work at all.
That was 15 years ago and haven't touched one since.
I know there are some nice newer opamps out today,but you beat the old TL series bifets.
I used to cringe every time I'd see a schematic or buy some kind equipment that they would call professional and find a jrc45xx inside.
I got to the point were I could bet you what opamps were being used in it by looking at the spec's and hearing it was a no brainer.
As far as the NE5532 and NE5534 goes i had some that were nice quiet and and most of them were noisey and out of spec.
Very inconsistent.
But the ones that did work sounded great.
I know it sounded contridictory but i had more than just a couple them, as ther was like betwen 40 to 60 chips in that mixer and I bought them in seperate batch's. jer
they worked fine in the signal path but turned the filters into vfo's and also some actualy worked in the filter sections but didn't sound consistent per section.
So I just used TL082's thourghout and it sounded way better than original stock.
It was as clean as my mackie 32-8.
Another time i was building a preamp or fuzzbox or something for my giutar or something and it failed miserably.Popped in a trusty TL082 and it worked prefectly with no changes.
After some research I found that it had something to do with bias current and had to be figured into the design, like ,to high of value in the feedback and it won't work at all.
That was 15 years ago and haven't touched one since.
I know there are some nice newer opamps out today,but you beat the old TL series bifets.
I used to cringe every time I'd see a schematic or buy some kind equipment that they would call professional and find a jrc45xx inside.
I got to the point were I could bet you what opamps were being used in it by looking at the spec's and hearing it was a no brainer.
As far as the NE5532 and NE5534 goes i had some that were nice quiet and and most of them were noisey and out of spec.
Very inconsistent.
But the ones that did work sounded great.
I know it sounded contridictory but i had more than just a couple them, as ther was like betwen 40 to 60 chips in that mixer and I bought them in seperate batch's. jer
2 months away, 169 pages later, OP Andrea banned (good) and it's still going with the same old same old flopamps, go discrete!
I only have good experiences with Texas NE5534A and have used quite a few.
The A type has guanranteed noise and offset spec.
As a replacement i use LME49710 also. It even has (slightly) lower distortion and voltage noise but 4 times more current noise so as a bipolar the NE5534A is still special.
If i need higher speed i take the LT1468.
Used correctly the NE5534A is a very neutral amplifier.
Simply swapping OPamps without measurements or optimisation and giving them a absolute ranking is a bit mindless i think.
The A type has guanranteed noise and offset spec.
As a replacement i use LME49710 also. It even has (slightly) lower distortion and voltage noise but 4 times more current noise so as a bipolar the NE5534A is still special.
If i need higher speed i take the LT1468.
Used correctly the NE5534A is a very neutral amplifier.
Simply swapping OPamps without measurements or optimisation and giving them a absolute ranking is a bit mindless i think.
100% agree...
People don t realize how good is this venerable op amp, truly
a technical breakthrough , ultra stable despite his 3 gain stages..
WWenza :"Would this apply for NJM vs JRC 45xx I wonder?"
If I recall one did perform better than the other,but it wasn't until the 4559 and 4560 series that i noticed comparable and decent performance.
Don't get me wrong I like the NE553x alot when used in a proper circuit designed for it.
Its just that I had a bad experience with it and the classic bifet never failed me or gave me bad performance in an circuit.
Even to this day,execept of course the few TL074's that went up in smoke in my fuzz box designs for some reason,but that was very rare.
So I couldn't justify paying the premium price for them.
The thing I liked the most about the TL0xx series was the low noise,extremely low THD and the high slew rate it has.
You could really tell the difference at higher signal levels.
And if I ever needed one in a pinch I can trott right down to rat shack and pick one up for 2 bucks.
I've got some new projects underway and can't wait to try out some of todays newer stuff!
If I recall one did perform better than the other,but it wasn't until the 4559 and 4560 series that i noticed comparable and decent performance.
Don't get me wrong I like the NE553x alot when used in a proper circuit designed for it.
Its just that I had a bad experience with it and the classic bifet never failed me or gave me bad performance in an circuit.
Even to this day,execept of course the few TL074's that went up in smoke in my fuzz box designs for some reason,but that was very rare.
So I couldn't justify paying the premium price for them.
The thing I liked the most about the TL0xx series was the low noise,extremely low THD and the high slew rate it has.
You could really tell the difference at higher signal levels.
And if I ever needed one in a pinch I can trott right down to rat shack and pick one up for 2 bucks.
I've got some new projects underway and can't wait to try out some of todays newer stuff!
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Are discrete amps really better than the best opamps? This is an honest question and not meant to be a provocation. Why do major companies use opamps in their CDPs and preamps when they have the skills to make discrete circuits and use them in their power amps? Do they use discrete solutions only because of the limited voltage rating of opamps or is it marketing?
I've found that it isn't easy to make a discrete amp that can compete with eg AD797 and OPA827. Hand on your heart, have you compared your discrete amp to one of the better opamps and found the discrete to sound better?
Not easy to answer as "best" means different things to different people.
For example "are discrete amps really better than the best opamps... for low drift ? No.
Are they better than 100% discrete for ultra low noise amplification of say a MC cartridge... probably not.
But it probably will 🙂
CDP's are an ideal candidate for opamps, particularly I/V conversion.
Marketing ? if they can convince enough folk that discrete is "worthwhile" and that is why they used it, then the only reason for doing so is to increase profits... they are all in the business of making the product for as little as possible (but that doesn't mean mediocre performance) if opamps are used.
Witness the few discrete products on the market... the price is outrageous and has no relation to the cost of the components used... but there are "believers" who will pay.
I would like to see anyone claim they have made a discrete amp that even comes close to the full specification of any modern device. Note the word "full", that doesn't mean selective parts of the spec.
And so on to the subjective bit 😉
I would say discrete can "sound" every bit as good as an opamp, there may be some aspects of the specification that discrete improves on, and similarly some aspects that the opamp improves on.
At this point I have to "quote" something that D Self mentions in his new book... it's one of those gems of info that really make you think.
You need a potential divider (for audio) to reduce the voltage level by half and using an NE5532 feeding two 500 ohm resistors is quieter than a purely resistive divider of say two 10 k resistors due to the Johnson noise of the higher value resistors. Now that makes you think... it did me anyway.
I am more than happy with opamps for the majority of application... and (as you are kind of asking) I have to say that applications such as using opamps to drive headphones for example is not an ideal use for them... and certainly no way to evaluate them.
Each has to be used "correctly", something I kep banging on about in this thread... but no one listens.
Happy Easter 🙂
I don't think many of us headfiers use them to drive headphones directly. I think most reports are based on how the opamps sound in front of a buffer of some kind, and I can't see that this is a bad use for them, quite the opposite.
That's fine as long as each opamp is used correctly 🙂
I was thinking of the CMOY do dah where folk swap IC's willy nilly and come up with strange and misleading conclusions.