When the manufacturers or distributors prove them to sound better in proper blind tests, that's when we can draw such a line.

Quote: Originally Posted by Mad Max How come some of y'all use those dip sockets as adapters? Way too much solder going on there. Doesn't that affect the noise floor? A socket shouldn't change the noise floor, or the sound, the slightest bit unless it makes it unstable. I think...

Quote: Originally Posted by leeperry well, time to move to single opamps my friend...duals always sound ugly. I kind of agree. The question is why this is so.

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The perceived quality of sound will always be subjective, so don't make this into a battle of what's wrong or right. This is my oppinion: 1. If you're using an opamp based amp, this IS the amplifier and will be the single most influential part. IME it's the amplifying stages that degrades the...

Quote: Originally Posted by metreonfuture well then, how does one make a punchy sounding cmoy that has strong mids and bass and good sparkly highs (that are heard! not felt like the dentists drill!!!!) with phones from (i think it's 16ohm for the atrios) to the dt770 80 ohm to the dt150...

Use any standard polypropylene like WIMA. Small. Cheap. Thermal stability. Sounds good enough (most of us probably can't hear the difference between a straight wire and a pp cap). No need to worry about long leads with unwanted inductance, burnt polystyrene or an empty wallet.

There's nothing wrong with JFETs in the signal chain. If cascoded or CFP they can make a very good input stage. If you want, you can build a discrete amp that's on par with high quality opamps, just don't expect it to be as simple as two or three transistors and some resistors. One of the...

How small? How good? A super basic discrete amp will sound worse than an opamp based amp. Simple isn't better. It's just a DIY wish. All amps can be made portable. There's a world of possibilities.

My experience is limited to folded cascode circuits like Earth. I have less experience from standard opamps like Moon or complementary amps such as Sun. Improvements on Earth will make it an AD797-clone. The simple SK170 input stage sounds warm and fuzzy and nice in a way but not clean...

Do you know if the Audio-gd people read this thread? Are they open to creative criticism and ready to improve their modules?

Quote: Originally Posted by Mad Max What does that resistor do, exactly? How do you know which value between 2.2k to 10k is best or is it experimentally determined? Edit: I see AD744 there is special because of pin 5 being for "compensation." What is the compensation? None of the...

Burn in will never change the sound dramatically. Such reports are either vastly exaggerated or the change is in the head of the listener. It's often stated that RFI/EMI will influence the sound of amplifiers, and an amp could sound different depending on what activity is going on in the area.

Either there's something wrong with this amp or the amp you use as a reference.

I haven't that much experience from "resistor rolling". I've tried PRP, Panasonic, Firstronics metal film and no-name carbon film. If there's an audible difference it's minor and greatly overshadowed by the coloration of the active parts (transistors, opamps) and the amplifier's design. Until...

Quote: Originally Posted by rjm003 Please elaborate. My understanding was that harmonic distortion arises from mismatched devices, and that crossover distortion is not an issue in class AB... Like stated above I think you should include the buffer inside the loop of the opamp...

With an open loop buffer and class B (or AB) biasing, this amp will suffer from very high distortion when driving low impedance phones. The distortion spectrum will be nasty with high levels of odd order harmonics.

When counterfeiting opamps, how do they do it? All dual opamps and most of the singles have the same pinouts, so it's not easy to tell if they're fake or not, and they could easily be counterfeit. Some singles like LT1028, AD797 and OPA627 have unique pinouts, and I have a hard time to see how...

Quote: Originally Posted by Spacehead TLE2426 output=virtual ground virtual ground -> op amp -> buffer -> output ground this time I ditched the three op amps and used sijosae's class ab "buf634" buffer instead. It needs to be kept in op amp control, in feedback loop or there will...

Quote: Originally Posted by Spacehead I think Sijosae's discrete rail splitter sounds really bad. Indeed it does. The output impedance is far to high to serve as a ground for low impedance returns like phones. The crosstalk will be bad unless large capacitors from rails to...

Are you connecting the phones to this little amp? In that case I don't think it's low gain that's your problem. What headphones do you use? What's the impedance? To drive headphones directly there has to be more parts, a buffer stage. Another problem is the low voltage supply. I think it...

Well, well, well, now they're even cloning DIY amps. Who would've thought that? Headphone amplifier full kit w/ charger and chassis ! - eBay (item 220538377954 end time Feb-09-10 06:42:50 PST) There are also cloned Pass amps like B1 and F5.

Quote: Originally Posted by SpudHarris Ahh, sorry. Struggling to keep up with recent events etc..... yeah I've got some adapters coming with a place specifically for this. Need to check for capacitor values though. I'll go back and have a look. Good god, imagine the AD797 sounding even...

You can use your LM337T. Connect IN to negative rail, ADJ to the emitter of BD139 and OUT via a resistor to the emitter of BD139. BTW, when looking at the schematics I posted: I hope you understand that R9 is just there to illustrate the load of a headphone and not a resistor that should be...

Quote: Originally Posted by H22 Thanks, thats kinda what I was looking for. so the 6171 is a good ground channel amp, are the 6642 & 6654 also intended as ground amp or are they what you were using for the + channels? As far as low voltage is concerned I'm not to interested in that...