Updated:
20-Aug-01 13:41
Welcome to the DDDAC 2000 Column!
#4
I must start to apologize, to all those people (I know) have been checking my site the last few months, based on my promize to update certain projects ! Mainly 2 reasons kept me from updating the site. The first one was because I spent all my time on building "Golidav", my new SE Tube amp with Amorphe OPT and the KR300BXLS tubes. Every time I thought, I need to write something, I wanted to move on with the construction ! After all that was what I wanted, music! The second reason was the simple fact, that this Site was very DAC oriented. I felt I was making al kind of dirty patches to get the tube stories in..... Which hold me back on the first reason etc etc etc etc. Now I have finished Golidav, I found time to restructure the Site and update the stories. Please check and let me know what you think. Is it more structured now? easy to find your way? do you like the content? do...? speak up now, or hold your peace for ever !
Ecstasy with listening experiences after tweaking
I want to speak up here against all this, in my mind terrible, excaturating stories on tweaks or other equipment leading to "better" sound. Could we all please stop with the old phrases like: ...the curtain totally disappeared..... street lengths better sound...... finally I heard music from my speakers.... my jaw dropped on my lap ........ much much more detail and space..... I can go on forever here. It always looks like the old situation is like the crappiest junk ever built after the change was made. Both Magazines and Hobbyist make this "mistake" We should learn to make things relative. I will try to do so as well. What I mean here, to compare the results of a tweak with each other. Small differences can be beautiful as well, no doubt. But what had more impact? changing the Interstage Capacitor, or the resistor a the grid of the tube? may both were nice, but isn't it better to to say, that the impact of he C was of more impact than the R? I changed my Monster speaker cable recently for the own made silvercable (see projects). It was beautiful and I do not want to go back, but the impact of a meshplate AZ11 in the power supply or a regular plate, did more to the sound. And this is definitively cheaper! Although the silvercables were no that expensive, thanks to collective buying of the silver wire.... Never the less, all this tweaking is big fun, so I added the tweak section. I will share my tweak stories here, but first I will listen a bit more to the music!
Building and testing amplifiers
With the construction of the Golidav and the other updates I did, I spent loads of time actually measuring and later on tweaking the circuits. After all those years, my experience is that no prototype worked 100% when it is ready. Oh yeah! it may be working, but does it work optimally ??? no it does not !!! You need to check all working points, check bandwidth, slew rate performance, Squarewave results, distortion analysis etc etc. Only when you do this right and tune the circuit, you will have the amplifier you were hoping for to get in your living room..... My audiofriend TriodeDick understands this as well. He is currently spending a lot of time in tuning the amplifier circuits with a digital scope and FFT analyzer, great tools which helps us to understand the behavior of the circuit and tweak accordingly. I realize that not every one has a FFT analyzer, but Dick will publish soon his results and this will help every one to understand what can go wrong and what should be taken into account ! OK, a FFT analyzer is may be a luxury, but a sinewave generator and scope/multimeter is a must ! These will cost just a fraction of what you spent already on your hobby, don't it? I will report later also on my findings with tuning circuitry.
You can also read my previous columns:
Happy Listening and Building !!!!
Doede Douma
IMPORTANT: The information provided on this page is intended as guide for DIY activities and therefore free to copy and or publish. If any one wishes to use any of the information from my WEB site, please make sure to refer and footnote to my URL Link as source! Doede Douma