The Opamp thread

[sceleratus]

I'm pretty much just a solder monkey but I though ya'll might be interested in these.
There's used in the design of the balanced preamp I built and I love the sound...
 
 
THAT1200
 
THAT1646

 

[zilch0md]

^ I'm humbled.  

 

[sceleratus]

Certainly not by me.

 

[zilch0md]

  ^ I'm humbled.  

 

  Certainly not by me.

 
Yes - by your apparent soldering and DIY skills. I'm humbled and envious that you can craft things at will. I tend to be all thumbs. 

 

[sceleratus]

   
 
Yes - by your apparent soldering and DIY skills. I'm humbled and envious that you can craft things at will. I tend to be all thumbs. 

You have no idea.  I'm laughing.   First.  I can't understand a simple circuit with 2 resistors.  I've been doing this about 2 1/2 years.  I have learning issues.  However I'mm pretty intuitive and I can follow directions.  I learned to solder after watching Dave Jones EEVBlog 3 part tutorial.  (On his site or YouTube) Once you watch them you'll be able to solder most anything.   He uses a Hakko FX-888.  I gout one and I Love It.    I'm sure others like other brands.
 
So.  Go watch them and tell me what you think.

 

[zilch0md]

LOL
 
Well, I feel silly now, having made so many assumptions, but I think it's safe to say you're still out in front of me in soldering skills.  

 
I found the links.  Time to figure out what I'm doing wrong.  

 

 
 

 
 

 
Thanks for the recommendation!
 
Mike

 

[sceleratus]

After Dave's tutorial I can solder SMD component smaller than a grain of rice.

None of this has to do with Op-Amps. Sorry
Im not even qualified to be on this thread. Not sure why I'm here.
Oh ya. THAT IC's. If you know what they do I think you'll like them
Again Sorry for the hijack

 

[P701]

Guys when you are soldering different capacitors on single op-amps for its power connectors, and judging how they change sound to your liking or disliking... Have you ever thought that there most likely will already be factory soldered capacitors on the pcb of the device youre using, for the exact same power rails as opamps + & - pins? What if those capacitors colors and saturates your sound too and makes your opamp sound worse (or better)...
Kind of.... how can you judge your brand new all-shiny single capacitors sound, soldered on your opamp pins, when there may be combinations of other capacitors adding their own "sound" to it aswell. What if those capacitors are actually taking over the majority of the sound?

I guess, some were very gifted having such a great audio memory that they can remember and hear differences prior and after having soldered a capacitor on a power pins.... yes, power pins.

 

[zilch0md]

^ I can see your point - Burson Audio has an article that recommends similar mods:   http://www.bursonaudio.com/tweaks-for-geeks/
 
But I'm not willing to experiment with replacing the caps already used by my amp, much less try the many possible combinations to see which sound best. I just don't have the soldering skills - or the will.
 
Burson sells 35V 220uF SILMIC II caps for the "convenient" price of $5 each, to use as power-coupling caps with their Burson V5, but I went with the advice of pelopidas, to solder 35V 10uF caps to removable DIP8 sockets, instead of to the op-amps themselves - for the Burson V5.
 
  
 
My aural memory is sufficient to easily discern that these improve the sound - to my liking - when inserted  beneath the Burson V5 Duals in my iBasso PB2.  Taking them out after a few hours of listening makes it even more obvious.  
 
I do agree that it would be awfully difficult to A/B when soldering directly to an op-amp's power pins. 
 
And yes, it's possible that a different value or type of capacitor would sound better still and it's possible that replacing the default caps on the iBasso PB2's PCB could make an audible improvement, but I'm not a well-seasoned solder monkey.  It took me about five hours, start to finish, to produce what you see in the photo, above, after making several mistakes. The soldering itself had to be "mastered," but harder still was just figuring out how to cut and bend the leads, sculpting them to be as short as I dared make them, yet still have room to bend them upward to clear my other op-amps, once inserted. It was a royal pain for an "all thumbs" guy like me, also having to wear two pairs of reading glasses just to see what I was doing.  
 
So, I'm done for now, but I'm really glad I pushed past my inabilities to get as far as I have. 

 

[Michael V]

null-

 

[zilch0md]

Finally received my burson and realized it made no difference compared to the opa2107. I've used it for about 20 hours now and doesn't sound any different. I've used it with and without the capacitor and the only difference is with the capacitor the background is silent. So i went ahead and compared my computer with an Asus Xonar stx soundcard and little dot 1+ hybrid amp with voskhod tubes and the burson opamp and compared it to my headphones connected straight to my iphone6s+ and literally did not hear one difference with my grado RS2e and sennheiser hd 598 headphones. This make me think that either these headphones don't benefit from a DAC and amp at all or that DACs and amps don't make a difference and it's all placebo. I'm at a loss currently and I'm thinking about selling all my audio gear except for my headphones

 
I can't recall if you've done any other op-amp rolling, but I will admit that op-amps are way down on most people's lists of components ranked by their impact on sound quality - which typically goes something like this:
 
Headphones
Recording (quality of a track)
Tubes
Amps
DACs
Sources
Op-amps
Analog cables
Digital cables
 
And I can tell you that when I first started rolling op-amps in the iBasso PB2 about four years ago, I felt the same as you.  I mean, they all sounded pretty much the same.  But by trying different combinations and listening carefully, I slowly developed an ability to listen more critically - more analytically. I stopped listening to music with my intuition and started listening with the more logical side of my brain.
 
I can't honestly say that the journey was altogether a positive experience, because the more discerning your ears, the less you can enjoy poorly reproduced sound.  So, in a way, I actually envy your inexperienced ears.  
 
Note that I'm not saying I was born with better ears than anyone else. I genuinely believe that, short of any health problems with our hearing, we can all become more "discerning" with experience.
 
So, don't be too hasty, but yeah, I can empathize with your perspective - that the money was not well spent, in your case.  And that's a perfectly valid complaint.
 
There's no right or wrong, here. I know a guy who swears the least expensive wine he can enjoy costs him $25 a bottle when he buys it by the case, so he's not really happy with the price he's paying, but with experience, he has grown to detest the wines that he can actually afford.
 
I want to tell him, "Suffer!"  

 
He says there are some $100 wines (and higher) that he drinks on special occasions, that are "to die for."  
 
No thanks!  I'd rather stay "inexperienced" than go through what he's suffering.  Keep me away from the good stuff!
 
Don't hesitate to spend your hobby dollars elsewhere. As it is, I'm caught in the whirlpool, but I keep myself on a very tight spending budget when it comes to audio. It's a bottomless pit.
 

 

 

[SpudHarris]

Mike, wise, wise words my friend!

Your journey has been the same as mine to the tee... We all have to start somewhere but most of end up at the same place. A place where the slightest improvement is disproportionate in cost and unless you have a bottomless wallet, we have to say enough is enough.

Critical listening may be a PITA at some point but eventually (hopefully) you get to point when you say "you know what?, I am happy with my set up given my budget so now I'm going to revisit my music collection"

I reached this point fairly recently but then decided to re rip all my CD's in FLAC (used to be a fruit based supporter). So now I am happy and my tweaking is purely for fun and not an active search for something better. If money becomes no object at some point in the future, I'm not convinced I would change where I am now. I listen to my tunes at least 2 hours a day and am convinced it really can't get "much" better.

OpAmp rolling, like you say is way down the list of tweaks and will never be night and day, more one of the final preferences dependant on extensive listening and genre choice.

It's a journey but it's a great journey and there is no better place than Head-Fi to help and support you along the way.

 

[leeperry]

Blind opamp rolling is plain idiotic anyway, pros on diyaudio such as Scott Wurcer consider us to be total morons when we talk about opamps such AD797 adding a sonic color of their own duh...Andrea became quite a VIP there, well..before he got banned at least lol...mostly because an opamp needs to have a custom tailor-made surrounding circuit of its own and the higher range the chip the worst it'll get due to its extreme sensitivity, blind rolling of LT1028 or AD797 will end up having 99% risks of having the chip oscillating so at the end of the day we'll be posting subjective impressions regarding its malfunction and how trebles are a little zing and bass a little zung duh, reason why a cheaper opamp can sound a lot better when not rolled by monkeys but actually properly implemented by an EE. I'm currently impressed by Muses8920, god forbid ^^

 

[zilch0md]

Mike, wise, wise words my friend!

Your journey has been the same as mine to the tee... We all have to start somewhere but most of end up at the same place. A place where the slightest improvement is disproportionate in cost and unless you have a bottomless wallet, we have to say enough is enough.

[snip]

Indeed! About the only thing I can add, for Michael V's sake, is that sometimes, an upgrade is premature relative to some other, much weaker links in the chain. Installing anti-sway bars in hopes of improving the handling of a 1960s era muscle car will be difficult to appreciate if it still has drum brakes, leaf springs and heavy steel rims.

You just have to keep building until, suddenly, things begin to gel. You'll know it when it happens. If the journey offers more frustration than fun, it's not for you - and again, that's perfectly valid.

It's a shame we can't walk into a giant laboratory and play mix and match with all the latest head-fi gear, until we leisurely figure out what sounds best to each his own tastes.

Mike

 

[Mad Max]

  Blind opamp rolling is plain idiotic anyway, pros on diyaudio such as Scott Wurcer consider us to be total morons when we talk about opamps such AD797 adding a sonic color of their own duh...Andrea became quite a VIP there, well..before he got banned at least lol...mostly because an opamp needs to have a custom tailor-made surrounding circuit of its own and the higher range the chip the worst it'll get due to its extreme sensitivity, blind rolling of LT1028 or AD797 will end up having 99% risks of having the chip oscillating so at the end of the day we'll be posting subjective impressions regarding its malfunction and how trebles are a little zing and bass a little zung duh, reason why a cheaper opamp can sound a lot better when not rolled by monkeys but actually properly implemented by an EE. I'm currently impressed by Muses8920, god forbid ^^

 
I sure love the recording (and playback) quality of my opamp-rolled Tascam US-122MkII, even though the circuitry is made for NJM4580 rather than the ADA4610s I rolled in.  Maybe there are really pleasant/musical distortions coming from those ADI opamps, who knows?  At least the chips aren't oscillating, lol.