This reminded me the "10 blind men describing an elephant" story. How'd the modern version be? 10 deaf engineers trying to describe sound?
- It's just a sum of sine waves! says Fourier's nephew
- It can transmit only this much information! says Shannon's disciple
- etc (feel free to contribute)
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Kindhornman, you are aware of all sorts of variants in HF "waveguides".
Do we need to list them all?
L' Clerch's work ought to be considered as well.
Everything is a derivation of a past idea.
Very little completely original thinking happens, ever, in any field.
Now, it seems that people have a great fear of doing these tests.
Perhaps they fear that they will be shown to NOT be able to hear some things that others can? One can only speculate...
The series test is valid for several reasons. They ought to be self evident. Since I've stated at least one that is valid already, we can leave it there.
Let's say this in addition - perhaps one could look at the series string test as a "training device".
We "amplify" the distortion, the characteristic distortion by using N passes, to the point where it becomes obvious to the listener. Ok? Now the listener can focus on the characteristic. Perhaps listen this way for quite some time... then back off the "N" until it appears to go away?
Well, now, one would learn something IF one tested this initially, and the subsequently noted if there was a different "N" number before and after. Yes? ESPECIALLY if that number happened to be clearly different, and clearly different in the same way for multiple "testees".
In addition, those who have perhaps less natural sensitivity or acuity WRT to the alleged "disturbing quality" would finally have had the chance to hear it clearly.
Then subsequently, IF it ever appeared again, they'd have a basis for recognizing it.
Of course, perhaps one just would rather not know...?
Do we need to list them all?
L' Clerch's work ought to be considered as well.
Everything is a derivation of a past idea.
Very little completely original thinking happens, ever, in any field.
Now, it seems that people have a great fear of doing these tests.
Perhaps they fear that they will be shown to NOT be able to hear some things that others can? One can only speculate...
The series test is valid for several reasons. They ought to be self evident. Since I've stated at least one that is valid already, we can leave it there.
Let's say this in addition - perhaps one could look at the series string test as a "training device".
We "amplify" the distortion, the characteristic distortion by using N passes, to the point where it becomes obvious to the listener. Ok? Now the listener can focus on the characteristic. Perhaps listen this way for quite some time... then back off the "N" until it appears to go away?
Well, now, one would learn something IF one tested this initially, and the subsequently noted if there was a different "N" number before and after. Yes? ESPECIALLY if that number happened to be clearly different, and clearly different in the same way for multiple "testees".
In addition, those who have perhaps less natural sensitivity or acuity WRT to the alleged "disturbing quality" would finally have had the chance to hear it clearly.
Then subsequently, IF it ever appeared again, they'd have a basis for recognizing it.
Of course, perhaps one just would rather not know...?
Bear you're all hat no cows. Had you put your energy in soldering instead of arguing, you'd had a chain of 100 opamps by now....
L' Clerch's is one horn that I didn't name but was eluding to. I did designs like that in the late 70's just never commercially, it was an interesting idea but I got lost in doing other work and left that development alone. Glad he did that as it proves to others that there is something beside a conic section horn that can actually work well. It is to bad he passed away, I did like his thinking and agreed on the conceptual application.
<sigh> Scott, I hear what you are saying.
But please, with all due respect to a company that has sold mega amounts more than I ever have, and has likely made more money than I ever will, I can't say that I would ever want to listen to any Adcom gear for more than a brief period, and then only to be polite to others.
There are a few factors as to why it COULD be possible that the Adcom people could hear something by changing out preamp chips and you and your people could absolutely not. Nor would I expect that you ought to have.
The simplest explanation is that they literally trained their brains to listen to their "stuff". You did not. They were able to basically "hear past" certain things that whenever I listened to Adcom gear I found very objectionable. It's the same reason that anyone hears their own system (usually does) as being better and clearer than a visitor does or can.
I could bug Robert, if that would make you feel better... but before it makes sense to turn to Robert, we'd first have to decide if it is even possible for opamps (yes, applied properly - do we need to say this forever?) to sound different from each other or not?? By this I mean opamps that any EE would agree are appropriate for the circuit to be used for audio, ok?
He's clearly one who believes he has heard differences in the way opamps sound.
I'm trying to get a little love here, and maybe some assistance & participation in what ought to be a pretty easy and simple project for a group to pull off, giving a whole lot of people the opportunity to experiment with this for themselves, and with others...
... the way I see it, a group could (in a separate thread) do what is done for a variety of circuit design & builds here - discuss the design, the features, the design issues, get that right, go to pcb layouts, tests, go to final pcb, send that out for fab, and do a group buy (or similar - I might just make the boards available at my expense) then proceed to see what is found...
(there's quite a bit to get right, including layout, power supplies, switching, etc...)
But please, with all due respect to a company that has sold mega amounts more than I ever have, and has likely made more money than I ever will, I can't say that I would ever want to listen to any Adcom gear for more than a brief period, and then only to be polite to others.
There are a few factors as to why it COULD be possible that the Adcom people could hear something by changing out preamp chips and you and your people could absolutely not. Nor would I expect that you ought to have.
The simplest explanation is that they literally trained their brains to listen to their "stuff". You did not. They were able to basically "hear past" certain things that whenever I listened to Adcom gear I found very objectionable. It's the same reason that anyone hears their own system (usually does) as being better and clearer than a visitor does or can.
I could bug Robert, if that would make you feel better... but before it makes sense to turn to Robert, we'd first have to decide if it is even possible for opamps (yes, applied properly - do we need to say this forever?) to sound different from each other or not?? By this I mean opamps that any EE would agree are appropriate for the circuit to be used for audio, ok?
He's clearly one who believes he has heard differences in the way opamps sound.
I'm trying to get a little love here, and maybe some assistance & participation in what ought to be a pretty easy and simple project for a group to pull off, giving a whole lot of people the opportunity to experiment with this for themselves, and with others...
... the way I see it, a group could (in a separate thread) do what is done for a variety of circuit design & builds here - discuss the design, the features, the design issues, get that right, go to pcb layouts, tests, go to final pcb, send that out for fab, and do a group buy (or similar - I might just make the boards available at my expense) then proceed to see what is found...
(there's quite a bit to get right, including layout, power supplies, switching, etc...)
Bear you're all hat no cows. Had you put your energy in soldering instead of arguing, you'd had a chain of 100 opamps by now....
You come over here and cover my bases, I'll spend the next month on my bench... ok?
That's why I pitch it as a group effort - a whole lot of people who jump in here for a few minutes at a time are up to their ears in real-world alligators... I am.
Bear I think many of use have our own alligators to deal with. I know I do as I am doing way to many hours doing CAD work on a project I never expected. I only look at this site to take a break from doing revisions on my drawings.
"with each half electrically similar to the µA741"
All of them are electrically similar. 😀
Here you go again, no let up, for all I know what you listen to would make me feel the same way. They have a lot of happy customers maybe they are all deaf idiots.
Actually several listening experiences of top end systems sent me out of the room I have no reason to believe yours would be any different.
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Oh you certainly can dream, and you would not be the first to suggest different colored molding compound (what great branding!!)
Adding color sounds innocuous, but knowing our luck we'd find out that the coloring compounds also happen to eat bond pads or change transistors or degrade the leadframe or...or...or. And of course the failure mechanism would only appear after like 3 years, once millions of units have been sold. And then some super popular piece of electronics starts exploding, youtube videos go viral, it makes the news...all from adding a few colored dots 😉
Plus, I don't want to sit in the meetings where marketing presents their research on which colors aren't offensive and test better with customers.
You can have any color you want, as long as it's black 😎
I call it a piece of garbage, but that's just because I sit next to the OPA134's designer and it's easy to get a rise out of him 😀
In all seriousness though it's a good JFET-input part, especially considering when it was made, and if a DIP package is a must-have.
Admittedly I don't know what establishes an op amp as a classic though, does someone give us a plaque? Scott, did you get one for the AD797?
I can't see how it is vastly different than the LM4562 I tried. Did I miss something?
Input stage topology. The OPA134 is a JFET-input op amp while the LM4562 is BJT.
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