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Design >> Analog Design >> [help] top journals and magazines of audio circuit design
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Message started by trashbox on Dec 24^th, 2009, 7:30pm

Title: [help] top journals and magazines of audio circuit design
Post by trashbox on Dec 24^th, 2009, 7:30pm

Hi all,

Is there any top journals or magazines of analog audio circuit design? For example, audio amplifier(class-AB, class-G, class-D), AD/DA convertor, offset cancellation, SNR/THD improvement etc information.

Thanks in advance.
Trashbox

Title: Re: [help] top journals and magazines of audio circuit design
Post by loose-electron on Dec 31^st, 2009, 2:34pm

interesting question - "audiophiles" really don't have a lot of "good science" applied to their products, oddly enough.

If you take a look at the signal processing science of audio, and then look at the audiophile media outcry that has happened with:
33rpm, vs, 45 rpm, vs 78 rpm arguments
CD replaces vinyl records
transistors replace vacuum tubes
audio compression
(and the list goes on)
You realize that it less of a science, and more of a marketing and head game.

Remember - Many people out there think Monster Cable improves sound, but they cant pick the cable out of the double blind study where you flip between wires with a switch.

There are a bunch of trade magazines, but scientific peer reviewed journals based on ***quantitative*** not subjective data? I don't know of any.

jerrry

Title: Re: [help] top journals and magazines of audio circuit design
Post by Ken Kundert on Jan 1^st, 2010, 6:45pm

I remember seeing an advertisement for a predecessor for Monster Cable back in 1978 when I was working for Tektronix. It was a special weave of individually insulated strands of wire. The idea was to achieve an 8 Ohm characteristic impedance in order to match the impedance of the speaker, thereby maximizing power transfer (they really claimed you could get twice the power transferred to the speaker with their cables). Unfortunately to get that very low characteristic impedance, they had to maximize the capacitance between the leads and minimize the inductance (hence the weave of individually insulated wires), and the highly capacitive load had the unpleasant side effect of causing the amplifier to go unstable and blow itself up.

-Ken

Title: Re: [help] top journals and magazines of audio circuit design
Post by loose-electron on Jan 2^nd, 2010, 10:13am

Ken Kundert wrote on Jan 1^st, 2010, 6:45pm:

unpleasant side effect of causing the amplifier to go unstable and blow itself up.

Ah, but it sold product and made money...

EE's of all flavors need to remember that usually the market drives the product, and not the technology. 99.9999% of end users don't have a clue what goes on inside the box.

Make that 99.99999999999% :D

Ken - probably should move this to "tech talk" ;)

jerry

Title: Re: [help] top journals and magazines of audio circuit design
Post by vivkr on Jan 7^th, 2010, 2:13am

trashbox wrote on Dec 24^th, 2009, 7:30pm:

Try the publications from the Audio Engineering Society. I once looked up some publications of theirs but that was not really circuit design, but a little higher level. The publications though are peer-reviewed and have a high standard. As for the papers, since I am not a member of the AES, I mailed the authors and they sent me the stuff.

Vivek

Title: Re: [help] top journals and magazines of audio circuit design
Post by vivkr on Jan 7^th, 2010, 2:19am

loose-electron wrote on Jan 2^nd, 2010, 10:13am:

Ken Kundert wrote on Jan 1^st, 2010, 6:45pm:

unpleasant side effect of causing the amplifier to go unstable and blow itself up.

Don't want to bash the audio folk too much but an anecdote comes to my mind. As a student, I had the opportunity to meet a senior executive of a company working on audio products at a conference.

Apparently, the company used to sell cables with a bit of gold in the end connectors but figured out that this wasn't really needed, and so decided to dispense with it and offer the customers much cheaper cables instead. In the end of life notice for the "gold" cables, they even mentioned explicitly that the performance of the old gold and the new cables was identical. However, their audiophile base made such a huge noise that they backed off.

They still sell the old cables with gold at the ends, or rather supposedly. It is the exact same cable, same performance, just carrying the product number of the old gold cable, and there are people paying 10 times the price, willingly, even though the manufacturer is offering a much cheaper replacement!

And let's not talk about CD vs. vinyl. We would really need to move the post to some other forum...