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Originally Posted by haymaker18 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
As long as it sounds great and I'm not gonna get electrocuted, should I really care? It can't be that dangerous if it sounds that good, can it? If it can't handle the voltage, won't it just wreck the opamp? No big deal there...
-dan
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It is not as if the opamp cannot handle that much voltage, it will not self-destruct, as it can handle 30vdc or +-15v. On the other hand, the AD8656 will fail if used in the LR or buffer sockets.
I am of the "if it sounds great, use it" camp, assuming the opamp is capable of handling the supply voltage.
FWIW, my only criteria when experimenting with various combinations of opamps is how much the sound resembles what I would hear live. I don't look for bass, mids, trebles, etc, just that elusive perception of LIVE which admittedly has psychoacoustic ramifications as well as simply audio factors.
I also try all of my phones before suggesting a particular combination for folks to try, as I have often found a combo that sounds really great on my circumaural phones, but terrible with my IEMs or vice-versa. Why that happens, I don't know, as in theory, they should all sound the same. I suspect that capacitance and inductance factors throughout the amp circuitry accounts for these differences.
About the only use I make of the datasheet specs is to look at the noise figures and squarewave response to both large and small inputs. I have found that invariably the opamps that have both good squarewave response and low noise sound quite good for audio applications. I do, of course, check to make sure that the opamp is capable of handling the supply voltage used in that particular socket.
Specifications alone are not indicative of how good the opamps will sound. Consider for example the LME49720 and its earlier versions...they have superb specs, but sound rather unemotional, analytical, and, to my ears, not especially realistic in either SQ or imaging.