Bear
I repeated the title of this thread for a reason. SOME people find nothing wrong with op-amps when they have a choice of just about anything. Saying over and over I wasn't there, some live shows sound lousy, some musicians can't here the difference, some recording engineers must be deaf, etc. also is irrelevant.
I had a good yarn with FMac FOH engineer last time they were in town.
I demoed my filter to him during sound check and his hearing ain't all that good.
I treated the multicore between acts and a couple of fellow crew who are in on the joke clearly heard the difference.
Dan.
Like me. It is clear (and I have posted some graphs from a product people can buy and solder themselves) that you can make amplifiers from Phono to line level that have distortions well below any accepted level of the human ear to detect and (as Scott has pointed out) below some basic fundamental levels like the brownian motion in the air.
For those of us who chase neutral in our amplification as part of attempting to create high fidelity, times are good.
For those of us who chase neutral in our amplification as part of attempting to create high fidelity, times are good.
Not the same person this was a one time for hire job. He actually owned and ran a rather successful early digital hardware company that his (x)wife took. Last I talked to him he was writing software to help kids with Asperger's IIRC.
Scott,
I wonder if there might be what I'll call the 2N3055 problem with some opamps. The 2N3055 was introduced by RCA as a slow but rugged power transistor. The process originally used to make them is long obsolete. It came to where any leftover or sub par power transistors that surpassed the basic ratings got marked 2N3055 even if they had much higher gain or FT as the part was extremely popular. Now some manufacturers would add a suffix letter and actually produce parts to their specification.
With classic opamps such as the uA709 or uA741 do they still make them on the original lines? (Of course not.) So are the current products labelled as such really the same or are they significantly improved? Do folks actually mark drop outs from similar parts as an older item?
Yes these older opamps are obsolete but for whatever reason folks still use them in new designs! (I actually see them pop up every so often.)
They would be good for music listeners too if the "audio engineers" would eventually admit that directly and indiscriminately applying linear systems control theory to non-linear ones works on the lines of this (look at the elevators):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faB5bIdksi8
All this continuous nonsense about how opamps must have a sound of their own and that they are inferior in some way to discrete devices is getting to be a rather tit for tat argument between the objective and subjective crowd is just plain dumb.
This argument about the fact that Sy says that by the time he strung together 5 or 6 opamps in a series and could then hear a difference was a simple case study I would say. To make that a problem or to question why it was 5 or 6 just goes to what are the thresholds of Sy's hearing in those tests or anyone else who has their own hearing discretion doesn't in fact point to a problem with the opamps in question.
If we did the same experiment with discrete devices and strung a series of the best supposed discrete transistors in series don't those who keep arguing that opamps are bad think that at some count of devices you would hear some kind of difference in sound, and what the H^ll would that prove, just that things are either additive or multiplicative when you do something like this?
In my eye the subjective arguments put up here have been full of hot air, not one scintilla of proof of problems with using opamps in the correct method. just lost of smoke and mythology at best.
And how anyone is trying to compare Pro-audio sound systems to good to great home systems is beyond me. totally different situations and applications with some very seriously different types of equipment. I surely don't expect to be seeing 1000 watt Crest amplifiers in someone's home stereo, not a great idea and the pro amps are definitely not intended to be the most neutral devices, they have to make massive power in a small package for portability. not the ultimate audio quality which is unnecessary in most amplified concert sound systems.
I've have been around pro audio since I was 15 years old and I have seen the changes from the days of the old dark green Altec tube amplifiers of my youth and what we have today. There is no comparison between what we had then and what we have now, the only area that has remained virtually unchanged besides incremental improvements is the speaker devices themselves, not the implementation of now mostly array systems but the actual mechanical devices that produce that sound. Not a whole lot different between today's compression drivers and one made 50 years ago by JBL or Altec or RCA or any other early design. What has changed is all electronics, compressors, de-esser's, parametric EQ, digital mix consoles and such.
Everything in pro audio is based on opamps and such, anything less would just make the packages to large and cumbersome to move around, try and move in and out a sound system sometime and tell me you'd rather go backwards to all discrete device in large packages, no fun I can tell you.
All this talk about opamps and then those same subjective types will argue about how you need to use the most expensive ESS dac out there or you are just a fool for not having the best! Tell me there are no opamps in those digital chips, what a self serving argument those who keep this argument going are having, arguing both sides of the same question.
This argument about the fact that Sy says that by the time he strung together 5 or 6 opamps in a series and could then hear a difference was a simple case study I would say. To make that a problem or to question why it was 5 or 6 just goes to what are the thresholds of Sy's hearing in those tests or anyone else who has their own hearing discretion doesn't in fact point to a problem with the opamps in question.
If we did the same experiment with discrete devices and strung a series of the best supposed discrete transistors in series don't those who keep arguing that opamps are bad think that at some count of devices you would hear some kind of difference in sound, and what the H^ll would that prove, just that things are either additive or multiplicative when you do something like this?
In my eye the subjective arguments put up here have been full of hot air, not one scintilla of proof of problems with using opamps in the correct method. just lost of smoke and mythology at best.
And how anyone is trying to compare Pro-audio sound systems to good to great home systems is beyond me. totally different situations and applications with some very seriously different types of equipment. I surely don't expect to be seeing 1000 watt Crest amplifiers in someone's home stereo, not a great idea and the pro amps are definitely not intended to be the most neutral devices, they have to make massive power in a small package for portability. not the ultimate audio quality which is unnecessary in most amplified concert sound systems.
I've have been around pro audio since I was 15 years old and I have seen the changes from the days of the old dark green Altec tube amplifiers of my youth and what we have today. There is no comparison between what we had then and what we have now, the only area that has remained virtually unchanged besides incremental improvements is the speaker devices themselves, not the implementation of now mostly array systems but the actual mechanical devices that produce that sound. Not a whole lot different between today's compression drivers and one made 50 years ago by JBL or Altec or RCA or any other early design. What has changed is all electronics, compressors, de-esser's, parametric EQ, digital mix consoles and such.
Everything in pro audio is based on opamps and such, anything less would just make the packages to large and cumbersome to move around, try and move in and out a sound system sometime and tell me you'd rather go backwards to all discrete device in large packages, no fun I can tell you.
All this talk about opamps and then those same subjective types will argue about how you need to use the most expensive ESS dac out there or you are just a fool for not having the best! Tell me there are no opamps in those digital chips, what a self serving argument those who keep this argument going are having, arguing both sides of the same question.
We are dealing with a complex system that includes non-linear parts, starting with air as a transmission medium and ending with the psychoacoustic effects of sound.
And our approach to understanding and perfecting it is through applying linear systems theory? And polishing amp's THD from 0.00008 to 0.00003? Is this sane?
Ah you are just sliding the goal posts again. Fine.
Thread is about what is wrong with opamps, not what is wrong with speakers and microphones.
Thread is about what is wrong with opamps, not what is wrong with speakers and microphones.
There's nothing wrong with opamps. It's the ways you use them that can be wrong.
Satisfied?
Yeah I buy that. I would welcome proof of someone who can hear the motion of air molecules in a room, but not holding my breath🙂
Meantime as Derren brown, Tarot readers, palmists and homeopaths prove the human brain is easily fooled. Sometimes this is for the good. If you can persuade a person to get better by talking nicely to them I am all for it.
Meantime as Derren brown, Tarot readers, palmists and homeopaths prove the human brain is easily fooled. Sometimes this is for the good. If you can persuade a person to get better by talking nicely to them I am all for it.
Those practices are common if they exist at all. There in fact is a market for all kinds of obsolete/NOS parts even IIRC NOS mil spec 741's at over $50.
Probably the best answer here.
Maybe it's a stability issue going on with some circuits/implementations?
Say you are "rolling" op amps and you plug in a device that has a lower phase margin into a circuit with high input capacitance and so the overshoot percentage increases substantially. Without compensation this effect could be audible on transients and such right?
Sorry I don't work with a lot of op amps and I am not sure if they are all "plug and play" these days. Maybe the specs are so good it's not an issue?
Last edited:
Did you know that red placebos work better than white ones? Placebos within placebos!
Jan
As usual..
If I buy a 741 today will it behave the same as a 1968 version? Or will it really work much better? Is it possible with today's production lines to actually make the original version?
Ooops I meant not common. I don't know, but if you made a 10X faster 741 it would break a lot of designs. Good question, did anyone migrate an old planar process to 8" wafers lateral pnp's and all? No idea.
TI still lists TO-99 cans as active. The data sheet is amusing bothering to explain a gain of two circuit is not exactly 2 because of the 5% resistors.
http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/lm741.pdf
It will only cost you $8.80 and a few minutes with a grinding wheel to find out.
Last edited:
- Status
- Not open for further replies.