Latest News
01-April-2013
I have probably already written more than enough about amplifier design in general, and far too much about slew rate, but I was playing around with a simple simulation and found some interesting results which I had previously suspected but never checked, so just one more article, then I promise to never mention slew rate again. The point, if there is one, is to compare the relative importance of slew-rate and gain-bandwidth for the accurate amplification of transients. I already knew the answer, but I was still surprised at how little difference a higher slew-rate limit makes.
As soon as we introduce a band-limited input signal these considerations become entirely unimportant, and the accurate amplification of audio frequency transients is determined by the phase linearity in the audio range, which is why I showed the phase response from 1kHz to 20kHz for my MJR7 design, but rarely mention its slew rate limit. The article also shows that the low-pass filter used in the MJR7 is practically the only effect on step or square wave inputs. Anyway, here is Slew Rate Part 2.27-Mar-2013
I still have a page of 'untried and abandoned' designs on the old website, and having accumulated a few more I have included two of these here on a new page Mosfet Designs.. As before, although they may be of some interest and could possibly be made to work well enough with further development, these have been rejected for good reasons, and are not recommended in their present form. A few more examples may be added eventually.18-Mar-2013
I have added a new page with a board layout for the phono pre-amp including an on-board voltage regulator. This uses the LM317 and LM337 for +/- 15V. I have not yet tried these, but see no reason to do extensive tests, I just copied the standard circuits from the data sheets.
I had a few enquiries whether I was going to make boards available for the phono pre-amp, and I did consider this possibility, but I have no great enthusiasm for making boards, and there are anyway board makers willing to make small quantities at a low cost from gif files similar to those I give, for example this one found on diyAudio. I think I would probably want to charge more if I made them myself.There is another reason to be reluctant to sell boards or kits, which is that I only made one pre-amp for my own use, and I have no feedback from anyone trying the circuit. Anyone with sufficient test equipment and the knowledge to track down and solve problems will probably be able to make their own boards anyway, so I don't want to encourage less experienced constructors to make this circuit until I am more certain of its repeatable performance. It took until the Mk3 version of the MJR7 before I had enough feedback from constructors to persuade me that it had developed into a reliable and repeatable product, and I made a few boards. Even then I didn't promote it to any great extent, and suggested it was not suitable as a beginner's project.
14-Mar-2013
Well, I still have no bright ideas for another electronics project. I have been working on an addition for my physics section, but that also is maybe going nowhere. I just found a musical link mentioning both the Higgs boson and Miley Cyrus, I'm not sure how they are connected, it's Higgs Boson Blues by Nick Cave. The sound quality is not great. It somehow reminded me of the Britney Spears' Guide to Semiconductor Physics which is actually a serious physics site. Also, I have been listening to 'Anywhere I Lay My Head', which is Scarlett Johansson singing Tom Waits songs, made even more remarkable by the appearance of David Bowie as a backing singer on some tracks, including Fannin Street.Components for the MJR7 continues to be a problem, the vertical mosfets are still widely available, but very expensive in some parts of the world, with an inevitable consequence that fakes are also being sold. The versions supplied by class-d are maybe the lowest cost at £3 each, and if bought direct fairly certain to be genuine. The cost of postage and any customs/import charges may be discouraging for some locations.
12-Jan-2013
My website provider makes available many statistics, for example the number of pages downloaded for different countries, and the most popular files. The top country as expected is USA, followed by UK and France, but with occasional surprises, at one time I was popular in Finland. The top links to my site include a few of the audio forums including audax.fr, audiokarma and diyaudio. The top file is currently the phono pre-amp page, but there is also some interest in the distortion testing files. The pdf document listed there was written 35 years ago, when I was a student and a relative beginner, so there are some things I would now do differently, but I don't think there is anything seriously wrong in that original version. The unity gain inverting amplifier used for some measurements could easily be improved, but was good enough for most applications back then.I have been taking a break from electronics for a while. The signal generator designs I was experimenting with work well enough, but nothing exceptional, and I may try one further idea some time. My other great interest is physics, but I have too limited mathematical ability to make any worthwhile contribution to that subject, and just struggle to understand some of the current theories. This week I was reading about black hole 'information loss', and the firewall theory.
01-Jan-2013
Best wishes to everyone for a happy and peaceful new year.02-Nov-2012
I have decided on a few practical circuits for my signal generator project. They are just interesting ideas I want to try rather than anything likely to have exceptional performance. For anyone wanting to find some better designs a good place to look is a diyAudio discussion, Low-distortion Audio-range Oscillator, now up to 83 pages and with lots of useful links. My own first effort using a twin-T oscillator was somewhat discouraging, but did show that the simple light bulb method of level stabilisation can still achieve low 3rd harmonic distortion, better than -120dB. The control loop adjustment was far too critical however.23-Sept-2012
I am starting work on my signal generator project, but it may be some time before I have anything to report. I have moved an earlier section from this page to a new Signal Generator Design, Part 2 page. So far it just includes a few design ideas, not anything final. I need to order a few parts for some initial experiments. My design aims include low cost and simplicity, not necessarily the ultimate low distortion, I will be happy with anything under -120dB. There are plenty of excellent published designs, including some with distortion under -140dB. Some of the best use Silonex optocouplers, such as the Silonex NSL-32SR3, available from Farnell (UK), so I will also order one of those to try.
(I checked the Silonex data sheet, and found that although based in Montreal they also have an address on Princes Street, Ulverston, in the English Lake District. I was there just a few weeks ago with my family, walking down Princes Street from the train station. Ulverston is most famous as the birthplace of Stan Laurel. I didn't notice Silonex, but we did find the statues of Laurel and Hardy outside the Coronation Hall theatre.)07-Sept-2012
There has been occasional disbelief that such a simple power amplifier circuit as the MJR7 could have very low distortion figures, and maybe my unconventional distortion measuring technique using signal nulling is partly to blame, so I am pleased to have been given a link to a page of measurements of the latest Mk5 version using more conventional test methods. The 1kHz distortion figures are even lower than my own tests suggest.
L'amplificateur de Mike Renardson à transistors Mosfet by Forr.
The article is in French, but for non-French-speakers most of the test results are still easily understood. A not entirely accurate translation can be obtained by copying and pasting sections of the text into Google Translate.
The tests include inductive and capacitive loads, revealing that there is no serious effect on distortion levels. I was surprised to see the test with a 16.8uF load, I never tried more than 4.4uF and had expected instability with higher values. Checking a simulation I find that the feedback loop phase shift does then go well past 180 deg. but the loop still has gain far enough above unity to remain at least conditionally stable.
Other tests include supply rejection, which again I am pleased to find are in agreement with my own observations. Many thanks to Forr for some impressive work.28-July-2012
I have added a few updates and new sections.
There are various design notes already scattered among the various MJR7 pages, but I have collected a lot of this onto one page, MJR7-Mk5 Design Notes which summarises the design features and its advantages.
I added a few diagrams to the end of the Capacitor Distortion page. They really add nothing new, but may help dispel unnecessary concern about choice of input coupling capacitors. My recommendation was, and remains, to use a low leakage type with small physical size to minimise interference pickup.
I continue to add and rewrite sections on the Assorted Items page. I use that page for more doubtful items with in some cases too much personal opinion, and 'facts' I am less certain about.6-June-2012.
The only project I have been thinking about recently is a design for a low distortion signal generator. The one I use at present has about 0.007% distortion at 20kHz, and I made it around 1982. Even back then there were plenty of better designs around, the best I was aware of was published as 'Spot-frequency distortion meter', by John Linsley Hood, Wireless World, July 1979, pp.62-66, with distortion 0.00015% at 1kHz. This used the R24 glass encapsulated low power NTC thermistor for level stabilisation, and these are practically unobtainable now. An important specification is the 'dissipation factor' which is 0.02mW/deg.C for the R24. Available types such as the Epcos G540 series are 0.4mW/deg.C and so need to be operated at much higher power dissipation. Anyway, I never tried thermistor control so I probably don't understand all the problems and design requirements. My own design used a jfet for level control and switched ranges covering 10Hz to 100kHz, sinewave and squarewave. A more or less similar circuit was published by Bob Cordell in 1981, which I unfortunately had not seen, otherwise I would have realised my choice of op-amp and jfet was far from the best even then. I have added a page with some initial ideas, but I don't do much practical work in the summer months so if there is ever a final design it may be some time away.I have updated and rewritten a few pages. One addition is to the MJR7 Constructor's Page immediately after my own version near the end of the page is a very impressive version of the Mk5 using a double-sided board and a highly original layout. My own design looks a little untidy in comparison, but the single-sided board should be easier to make for less experience constructors.
1-May-2012.
I have added a page showing my efforts to improve my Technics CD player, 'Technics SL-PG390 Mods'. None of the changes I tried produced any obvious measurable improvement, but at least my experiences may be a useful guide to what not to do. I was anyway already happy with the sound quality, so I will give up on any further attempts at improvement for now and just enjoy the music.I originally found that the 1kHz at -60dB test track spectrum had higher components at the 50Hz supply frequency and its harmonics than before the modifications, so I thought I had made this worse, but what I forgot to check is the effect of reversing the two pin power connector, and having now checked this I find that it does make a difference to the measurement, and connected one way it gives results almost identical to that before the mods, so it may be that I had the connector reversed between the two measurements, so I am happy to believe my efforts really did no harm. The 100Hz component, which may come from the full-wave rectified supply rather than from the transformer field is actually reduced, so maybe the improved supply smoothing did have some benefit. Moving the output section further away from the transformer would almost certainly reduce the 50Hz and 150Hz components.
22-April-2012.
I now have a Technics SL-PG390 CD player to experiment with. Initial tests show that it is already quite good, but maybe it could benefit from an op-amp upgrade and some attention to supply regulation, and maybe replacement of the muting transistors with a relay. When I have tried a few modifications I will add a page to report my results.08-April-2012.
I have changed the home page of the old website at Angelfire to just a list of pages, arranged in a more or less logical sequence. I have fixed some, but not all, of the dead links and missing images, but that website became a badly organised mess. This was an opportunity to read a few of the older pages, and it astonished me how much I wrote. Some of it is good, some rather poor, but I have already extracted what I think is best and updated it for this new website, so I will leave everything on the old site unaltered, unless I notice any really serious errors. There are a few pages on the old site which are not linked to, so these still need to be located and added to the index.05-April-2012.
I have also finished my own final version of the MJR7-Mk5 power amplifier, which I am now using in place of an older mosfet power amplifier I made over 30 years ago. I have added a few photos of my own version to the end of the 'Constructor's Page'. This uses a recycled case from the old amplifier, so it looks a little untidy, but works fine.30-Mar-2012.
I have finished the phono-preamp, and it is in a separate screening box and connected to my 'new' pre-amp, which as mentioned earlier is built in an old Cambridge ATAC3 case. I kept the original tone controls apart from replacing the op-amp, there is a bypass switch to disable them but I can hear very little difference when the controls are in the flat position. I tried my old Technics EPC205C-Mk3 cartridge with my Pro-Ject 1 Xpression turntable, expecting the worn stylus to sound bad, but it actually sounds remarkably clear. I previously only used that cartridge with a Thorens TD125 and it may be that slightly different alignment means that a different area of the stylus is now contacting the records, but whatever the explanation it does sound good to me. The Technics cartridge is a low output type, about 0.5 mV/cm/sec, but even so the noise level from the pre-amp is low enough, far below typical record surface noise, so I have no plan to try the active input resistance idea to reduce noise further. The 'rumble filter' appears to be effective, listening on headphones where lack of acoustic cancellation could make rumble a problem I still found it reasonably unobtrusive.I was thinking of upgrading some of my other signal sources. These are a Marantz CD273SE cd player, a Nakamichi CR-2E cassette recorder and a Denon TU-260L FM tuner. Listening and comparing these the one standing out as most in need of improvement is the Marantz cd player. I also have a Panasonic SL-CT700 portable cd player, and much prefer its sound. Looking for some technical information it appears that the Panasonic uses a MASH multi-stage noise shaping single-bit D/A converter as used in many Technics players. I had just assumed that this was a low cost inferior alternative to the more expensive multi-bit converters as used in the Marantz, but I see even some 'top of the range' players also use single bit technology. It is perhaps natural to assume that 16 bits must be better than 1 bit, but clearly it is not so simple. One point I guess may be important is that single-bit is inherently highly linear, but a 16 bit converter needs accurately trimmed components to achieve the same linearity. In a 25 year old player could it be that some of those 'accurate' components have drifted far enough to cause noticeable effects? Anyway, I will search eBay for one of the later Technics models to compare to the Marantz. There are then various well known 'improvements' to experiment with, for example replacing the output muting transistors with a relay.
20-Mar-2012.
I have made one, probably final, change to the phono-preamp, which is to omit the 100k preset offset adjustments for the op-amps. For some unknown reason they had to be set close to one track end to get close to zero output, but removing them entirely there was only about 1mV output. I should maybe investigate this further, one problem I can see is that there could be some interaction via the 5k6 in the 'rumble cancellation' circuit, but anyway I don't need extremely low output dc level so I have now removed the 100k presets from the circuit diagram. I have left them in the layout diagrams, but they should be considered optional, and not recommended. I have replaced the 220R presets with fixed resistors on my own board after first finding the settings for low dc output from the input amplifier section. The presets need to be removed from the board after adjustment before measuring their values, otherwise there may be errors. Parallel pairs of resistors were used to get close to the measured preset values. I doubt whether there would be any significant improvement from replacing the presets, so this also can be regarded as optional.17-Mar-2012.
The phono pre-amp is completed and preliminary testing shows that it is working well, with no signs of instability. My usual distortion measuring methods using test signal nulling are not easily applicable, but distortion testing is not really essential, the distortion will be primarily second and third harmonic, and the high feedback loop gains will ensure it is at a very low level. The RIAA accuracy, as I mentioned earlier, will depend mostly on component accuracy, so testing my own version only shows how accurate my components are, so I just did a check on the relative gains at 100Hz, 1kHz and 10kHz to be sure there are no serious errors. What is easily checked is input overload level, and the peak inputs before clipping are about 800mV at 20kHz, 200mV at 1kHz and 50mV at 100Hz, all of which are very good. Assuming a cartridge with typical output 1mV/cm/sec and referring to the Shure plot of maximum observed recorded velocities the peak input voltages likely to be encountered at the three frequencies are about 55mV, 40mV and 5mV respectively, so there is a good safety margin, particularly with my own low output cartridge. I used a 20k gain setting resistor, and in practice this should ensure sufficient overload margins even for high output cartridges.
The 100k op-amp offset adjustment presets needed to be adjusted close to the track end, which is slightly worrying, but maybe normal. The input stage presets were set for zero outputs from the two input stages, and then measured as 153R and 163R, so I will replace these with fixed resistors. There is really not much more I want to do other than connect it to an amplifier and have a listen. I have added a few photos, and there is a board layout page to help anyone wanting to try this design.I am in the process of replacing my old pre-amp using a case from an old Cambridge ATAC3, which is similar to the A1, which can often be found for sale 'faulty' on eBay, which is how I got mine. The power amplifier was rather poor, using TO92 case devices driving the power output transistors, and when these turn to smoke they can take a whole chain of other components with them. I am only using the case, the input switching and the volume control, which is the dual-concentric type, which avoids a separate balance control. To avoid the input sockets I have soldered all the input cables direct to the input board. The original transformer was a little noisy so I replaced it with a smaller and lower voltage type, and added the +/-15V regulator shown on the phono-amp page. I will also add a headphone amplifier at some stage, not necessarily the fet circuits I already included on the website which were intended as self-contained amplifiers with active volume controls.
Future plans include updating my FM tuner, this is a Denon TU-260L, again bought 'faulty' on eBay, which just needed a slight adjustment to the detector stage inductor. This has a reasonable VHF tuner (it works well for my own reception conditions anyway) but a rather ordinary filter, detector and stereo decoder. I have some good linear phase 10.7 MHz filters which I used in an old DIY design which worked well apart from a not so good VHF tuner, which used what were then the latest dual-gate mosfets but for unknown reasons, probably instability, had low gain and high noise. A transplant operation could combine the best of both designs. Then again there are some very good old tuners, if I remember correctly Technics and Yamaha were particularly good back in the 1980s, so renovating one of those could be a good option.
I have no plans for power amplifier designs, the MJR7-Mk5 is, I believe, about the best I can do with a single pair of lateral mosfets at 100mA apart from the option of adding feedforward, which I included on the old website as the MJR9 just to show what is possible rather than because it has any serious point. The earlier feedforward output stage published in Electronics World as 'Class-B in a New Class' is maybe worth returning to some day, I have added a few new comments at the start of that page to explain more about how this works.
25-Jan-2012.
I have changed the phono pre-amp circuit a little. The first version had some problems including probably a big switch-on thump. The circuit has been simplified, and now the preset pot is used as first stage load. Replacing with a fixed resistor, after adjusting for zero output voltage from the input stage and measuring the value, is possibly a good idea.22-Jan-2012.
I have what may be the final circuit for my RIAA phono pre-amp, and have added it as Phono Pre-amp Circuit. It includes the warning that none of the circuits shown have been built and tested, they are just theoretical designs. I have most of the components, and have started working out a board layout, so all being well it will eventually be built. Beyond stability and overload margins there is probably nothing worth measuring, the RIAA accuracy will depend almost entirely on component tolerances, so if I made an inverse RIAA filter that would have the same level of errors as the pre-amp, and so testing for an overall flat response will not be helpful. This is one example where a simulation result is good enough, an actual measured result would just show how accurate or inaccurate my particular set of components were.30-Dec-2011.
About 15 years ago I checked a few published RIAA phono pre-amp designs for accuracy, and found that only 2 out of 7 had anywhere near the correct equalisation component values. That was possibly an unrepresentative sample, but recently I checked a published 'inverse RIAA' network I wanted to use for testing purposes and again found an error. I also saw a very expensive pre-amp tested by Stereophile with surprising frequency response errors, so this seems to be a recurring problem. The correct equations for one common equalisation network were published in Wireless World in 1969, and with modern simulation techniques it is easy to check for errors.I need a pre-amp for my own use, and at first I intended to just copy a simple op-amp based circuit, but then I decided to try something more unusual. The ideas I wanted to try are nothing new, they were known at least 35 years ago, but these things get forgotten, rediscovered a few times, and even renamed, so they may not be familiar to everyone. For this reason plus the continuing equalisation errors I thought it worthwhile to add a design theory article. It ended up as 8 parts, a consequence of having a long winter holiday with nothing much else to do. Eventually I will try building and testing a real circuit, but for now it is just Phono Pre-amp Design Theory.
17-Dec-2011.
I really want to start adding some new material soon. I am working on an article covering various aspects of RIAA phono pre-amp design. I need a new pre-amp for my own use, so this should eventually lead to a practical design. As always I want to try something slightly unusual rather than just copy one of the many published designs.I have almost finished rewriting and transfering to the new website. The original plan was to delete the old Angelfire site, but there is still a lot of old information which may be of interest, so I may eventually just give it a new home page with links to those pages not on the new site.
Another consideration is that searching for 'audio amplifier design' on Google lists the Angelfire site at the top of the 1st page, but the new site is just about nowhere. It seems unavoidable to keep both sites for now.
30-Oct-2011.
I have been experimenting with Audio DiffMaker, a program which analyses pairs of audio signals and extracts the difference. In Part 2 of my capacitor distortion article I included the 'error' introduced by two different 2u2 input coupling capacitors as a sound file, and said that to me there appeared to be very little difference. Using DiffMaker I compared the two signals, and was surprised to find that the difference signal produced is quite large, so I am not entirely convinced that the result is correct. The measurements of the peak frequency spectrum suggest that the difference is not in frequency response, and the signals don't sound vastly different, so I can only guess that it is the different phase shifts which is responsible, as expected from my simulations of the effect of D/A in Part 1. As I said before, extracting the difference is of limited help, it tells us only that a difference exists, not which is better. The simulations suggested that the 'poorer' capacitor with D/A actually reduced phase errors and transient errors. Listening to the extracted capacitor voltages I think should be the most revealing test if there really are important sonic differences.
Adding resistive losses to a capacitor can reduce the resulting phase shifts compared to an ideal purely reactive component, but in input coupling applications any phase shift is in principle an unwanted effect. Anyway, the reduced error from a 10u type compared to 2u2 suggests that the capacitance value is by far the most important parameter for input coupling.I started to investigate further, but installing DiffMaker had the unfortunate effect of preventing my spectrum analyser program OscilloMeter from starting. I had to uninstall DiffMaker and reinstall OscilloMeter. I have not looked further into this other than repeating the installation to check that it was not just coincidence.
I have updated the home page, there are now links to articles about distortion measurement and speaker design.
27-Oct-2011.
I am continuing to update some older pieces and then transfer them to the new website. Re-reading old material there are always bits I think need improving or clarifying. The output stage protection article has been added and also the original 'feedforward class-B output stage'. That design continues to attract some interest, and it is probably the only really clever and original idea I ever had, so although I think the later mosfet amplifiers are better I don't like to be too discouraging. I have one small improvement I never tried, so maybe someday I will try another variation using a more ordinary circuit with LTP input stage and direct coupled output.08-Oct-2011.
I have added a Capacitor Distortion Part 2 page. The plan was to extract the error added by various input coupling capacitors, but with any of the test signals tried there appeared to be no signifficant difference betwen a polyester and a polypropylene both with value 2u2. A more sensitive test could subtract the two effects to reveal any difference, but trying a 10u non-polar electrolytic gave a big reduction in the signal related voltage across the capacitor, which is what we really want to reduce. My only conclusion was that increasing the capacitor value is far more beneficial than any small difference between dielectrics, unless something unusually bad such as a high-k ceramic is used.27-Sept-2011.
I don't have any immediate plans for either construction projects or articles, but I had a collection of short pieces which never became articles, so I have strung a few together in a page of 'Assorted Items'. Some are not very good, or at least too much personal opinion, and one is about DSP which I really know very little about, so maybe I got some of that wrong.On a totally different subject, I still have a physics section hidden away on the old website, with an article about relativity including application to rotating reference frames. I was reminded of this on hearing the announcement from CERN about their apparently faster than light neutrinos. The speed measurement needed accurate distance and time measurements. To measure the time between emission and detection 730km away clocks at those two points must first be accurately synchronised. There are at least two 'correct' ways to do this (and an infinite number of incorrect ways), one is global and the other local as explained at the above rotating frames link. The two methods do not match up exactly, for example locally synchronising a series of clocks round the perimeter of a rotating disc will require a discontinuity at some point. A global method could involve transporting clocks symmetrically outwards from the centre to the perimeter, which avoids the discontinuity, and will match up with clocks synchronised in a non-rotating frame, but gives local errors because the effect of the Coriolis force makes adjacent clocks experience different gravitational potentials during transport from the centre so that they run at different rates. The use of the GPS satellites for timing suggests global synchronisation was used, but then there is a mention of checking with some sort of portable timing device, which I would assume was only valid for local synchronisation, so it is not clear to me how this was done. Anyway, I am sure these sort of things were accounted for, and even if not the resulting error should be far less than the 60nsec discrepancy found. Actual faster than light travel would be far more interesting, it is allowed in current theories for virtual particles, but for real particles it would in principle allow transmission of messages backwards through time, with consequent problems for causality. If a faster than light particle is travelling forward in time in one reference frame then there exist other reference frames in which it travels backwards in time.
26-Aug-2011.
I have been trying alternatives to the 2SA1209 and 2SC2911, which are becoming more difficult to buy. The 2SA1381 and 2SC3503 should be good substitutes, and I have bought some of the Fairchild versions, the KSA1381E and KSC3503D. The E gain range is 100 - 200 and the D range is 60 - 120. The higher gain types are no advantage for the cascode stage so the NPN type can be D range. I found that these are in a fully insulated version of the TO-126 case, so there is no visible metal back plate, so the thick lines on my layout diagram used to indicate the 'metal back' should be understood to refer to the plain back surface, with the printing on the front.
I have substituted these types in my own prototype, and so far have found no problems, so after a few more checks these could become the recommended types.26-July-2011.
I think there may be a problem with my email service at present, I have had a few emails saying I haven't been heard from for a while, even though I had sent messages recently, so if anyone is having problems getting in touch I apologise. I have replied to all the emails I have received, but clearly some of my replies have gone astray. Checking spam filter settings may be a good idea for anyone having problems.It's summer holiday time and there will be a short delay before either website is updated. I planned to add some affiliate advertising to the new site to make it self-financing, that is why there were initially large unused spaces at the sides of pages, but now that is abandoned and only the full page version appears now. I also had a plan to write a few articles aimed more at beginners. There were a few problems I remember having difficulty with myself many years ago when first taking an interest in circuit design, so maybe covering that limited range of topics would be more useful than duplicating information already available on many other sites.
28-June-2011.
I wrote a section about slew rate a while ago, but I decided to replace it with a new article, Slew Rate, to make it a little clearer and include a few diagrams. This is just standard theory, but there are a few points not always covered. I mentioned the effect of increasing input stage current for a conventional degenerated differential input stage, this increases slew rate limit and also reduces distortion at lower levels. I originally guessed that doubling the current would reduce distortion only by a factor of 2, but after more thought revised this to 4, and then did a calculation for one example and got a factor of 7.78, which makes me think this is a more complex question than I first thought. This is relevant to the article on input stage distortion where I compared a few different circuits and concluded that the CFP was the best. I mentioned there that different signal levels would change the relative distortion levels of the different circuits, but I should have mentioned that the stage current would also affect results. There seems no point going through endless variations of input stages and their operating conditions to compare distortion, there are always other conflicting factors of importance such as noise and offset currents.12-June-2011.
The limited availability of the transistors specified for the MJR7 could be a problem, so I have been looking at alternatives. The lateral mosfets are available from a number of sources still, and there are a few alternative lateral types which are almost identical to the Renesas types, made by Exicon and Semelab, the main difference is the lack of internal gate protection zeners. Having used external zeners this is unimportant, but the usual precautions should be taken to avoid static damage. Keeping the gate and source connected with metal foil or something similar until it is firmly attached to the board should be sufficient. A relatively cheap option is the ACD102PSD p-channel and ACD100NSD n-channel from a company in the UK called class-d, who sell them for £3.00 each (Inc VAT). I have not tried their mosfets myself but someone who used them says they work ok. That company sell their own amplifier boards using these mosfets, so it is possible they will continue to have them available for some time.The small signal transistors for the MJR7 are a problem. I have plenty of 2SC2240BL and BC560C, but Farnell don't seem to have anything obvious to substitute for the 2SA1209 or 2SC2911. In USA Mouser have the KSA1381E in large quantities at a low price, and these are rated 300V which may be some advantage. (I mentioned in my 'Common-Mode Distortion' page that high voltage transistors could be expected to suffer less from base-width modulation. That was little more than a guess, and searching on Google failed to find confirmation, but I have now seen one comparison of VAS transistors (Groner, Fig.34 page 28) where high voltage rating was found to correlate fairly well with low distortion). T5 has higher power dissipation than the others and something in the original TO126 case will be more reliable, maybe with a small heatsink if using much more than a 60V supply.
mike@renardson13.freeserve.co.uk
