Regulators and beyond

Hey, everyone.  I've been enjoying my CMoy (and counting down the days until my 990 gets here...) but I can't help but plan ahead.

I have an itch.

My plan has been to construct a regulator so I can buy a 30v walwart and regulate it myself (mostly cause that's more fun.)  After making the regulator I was going to build a better, more complex, rail splitter, following the guilds on Tangent's site.  (Which I have found immensely helpful in combination with Google.)  The two of these would, supposedly, provide for a solid foundation to build off of.

Past that I have my sights set on building the PPA v2 amp.  That might change, but heck, it's a good goal, I think, after that who knows what?  (In the future, eventually, a DAC, though I not sure since I have been using my sound card as the DAC.)

My question for all of you is simply: should I bother with a better rail splitter or should I make two regulators, one to output positive and the other negative?  If I went with the latter, what would be my ground?

Also, on Tangent's site, toward the bottom, he lists a rail splitter with two grounds created: the virtual ground and a second ground on the output of the buffer.  He talks about tying that second ground to the larger return current coming back from the headphones... but how does one do that?  Is that just the ground wire coming off of the output headphone socket?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

-Robert

Thank you for the links.  I had been doing reading on regulators on Tangent's site and had been looking at the 317 already since it is referenced so very often.  I'm not going to attempt to lie and say I understand any of the circuits listed on his site 100%, but I think I get the basics.

It seems that (for example) the Jung 2000 regulator has a 5v drop across the circuit, so in other words in order to have regulated 30v I need to supply 35v at least.

My question is simply if I should feed that into a good rail splitting circuit to obtain +-15v rails or if I should, instead, simply make the regulator output 15v and make a second regulator to output -15v.  Actually... is that even possible off of the same walwart?  How would you go about changing the circuit to get the negative voltage needed?  Would you simply work off of the ground connection (er... the 0v connection?) on the DC input jack as opposed to the positive pin?

Does this give any benefits over a rail splitter?  Also, if it were to be done with two regulators, what would act as my ground?  Is there a difference between signal ground (for the actual audio) and the electrical ground (for power?)

Sorry about all the questions but I appreciate any and all help given.

-Robert

Fantastic information, Avro, thank you.  A little disappointing to find that a single dc out walwart wouldn't do the trick, but that's alright.  I'm not really thinking about applying this to a CMoy, but to larger headphone amps down the road.  I have a little bit of an obsession with modularity.

My thought process was: nail out a truly good power supply now on one board so that it is independent of the amp circuit.  As long as it's independent I can change and modify the amp circuit all I like without having to constantly change the power supply circuit.  This seems especially useful given that most op-amps I've been looking at will accept the same voltage ranges, with a little variation.

I'll have to do some reading on rectifiers as I've never even thought about that.  It wouldn't be something I would shy away from if it proved to be truly worthwhile.  But I figure that the power supply as a whole is like the foundation here... needs to be as strong and clean as possible.  I want to get it right.

Of course I don't need to mention that while I want this to be a re-usable circuit, it will never have to power anything besides chipamps.

That looks glorious, Avro.  I'm really liking the look of the +- regulator you made.  That's actually exactly like what I had in mind.  I think that etching my own PCB is a little beyond my ken right now, but could something like that be built on a patterned or another simple through-hole PCB?  Or is the wide copper planes a must have for this kind of circuit?