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Conventional wisdom has it that the series of harmonics we lump together as measured "THD" are created by diverse nonlinearities, occurring principally in the power devices of well-engineered units. The causes include: 1) fundamentally non-linear gain or transconductance, true of all devices; 2) opposing devices passing conduction among themselves, alias "crossover distortion," true of class-AB operation; 3) mutual mismatch between paralleled devices; 4) non-complementarity: pnp and npn devices are rarely truly identical opposites in every respect; 5) thermal feedback—where temperature…
Sidebar 1: Further Reading
Ben Duncan, "Analog Equipment Design," Parts 1–5, Home Studio Recording, 1985–86.
Ben Duncan, "Amplifiers—So You Thought You Could Just Change the Amp?," Line Up (Institute of Broadcast Sound, UK), April 1992.
Martin Colloms, "Some Observations on the Results of Objective and Subjective Technical Reviewing Practice in High Fidelity," Proc. IOA (UK), Vol.13 Pt.7 (1991).
Sidebar 2: DIY Monitoring
Inquisitive readers may like to hear what kind of garbage resides in their amplifiers' rails. Using an old AC-coupled power amplifier and speaker as a monitoring system, hook this amplifier's input ground to your hi-fi amplifier's central ground point (usually the 0V busbar between the reservoir capacitors). As you want to hear the AC signal on the rail, make sure that the DC voltage (which can be up to 100V) will be safely blocked. Connect a 100V, 100µF electrolytic in series with the hot input lead of the monitor amplifier, oriented so that the positive side of…
On Wednesday, October 16, 2019, from 5:00 to 9:00pm, Raleigh, NC, specialty audio retailer Audio Advice (8621-117 Glenwood Ave, Raleigh) will present Music Matters, showcasing the new Vandersteen KĒNTO Carbon loudspeaker.
Seminars will be presented every half hour. Featured special guest Richard Vandersteen, Founder and Head Engineer of Vandersteen Audio, will demonstrate this system along with Vandersteen Global Sales Manager Brad O'Toole and Dave Gordon of Audio Research. This is Audio Advice's premiere annual event and requires pre-registration to attend. Please register here.
Under the category of "abundance of musical riches," there are two fantastic series about music airing on PBS right now. You probably already know about one of them, but another, which many readers will like even better, is getting far less press.
The first program is the wonderful Ken Burns documentary series, Country Music, which runs for an astounding 16 hours while uncovering biographical detail on the artists that established each important country sub-genre: the Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Loretta Lynn, and on and…
Let's talk about management styles. If you want to run a successful small business, you must first be happy. If your personal goals are to learn and to discover, and you combine those with an intrinsic need to share your achievements and connect with people in your chosen field, you are likely to succeed. Given those qualities, if your business goal is to provide desirable goods and needed services, you will not fail. You will succeed beyond your wildest dreams if these are your goals and if you hire happy, smart, big-hearted people, with strong creative forces lodged inside their chests.…
Just then I was struck by a memory from decades ago, of being in a corrugated-metal pole barn, in the middle of nowhere. It too was super-clean and filled with 50 years' worth of vintage Leica film cameras. While perusing the shelves, I stumbled on a dozen or so black-bodied Nikon rangefinders hidden in a remote corner. All these cameras were supremely beautiful—and timeless looking. I wanted one of each. Driving home from the Leica barn, I wondered which digital cameras might someday be considered timeless and beautiful.
After lunch, Sphere and I began our carefully orchestrated…
This is the 100th and—surprise!—final edition of Music in the Round. MitR began in mid-2003, shortly after SACD and DVD-A discs made high-quality multichannel music convenient and widely available. At the time, I was convinced that multichannel reproduction was superior to stereo because it was able to reproduce the full sound of the performance—not just the performers. Stereophile's founder, J. Gordon Holt, had promoted this idea many times, but the appearance of the new media finally brought it to a wider audience. I recall that, when then-Editor John Atkinson and I floated the idea of a…
Alternatively, if you're interested in sophisticated DSP functions such as upsampling, downsampling, equalization, room correction, and so on, at high sample rates, you're going to need a faster box. Choose a computer with an 8th or 9th Generation Intel i7 or i9 processor (or the equivalent AMD Ryzen CPU), with fast RAM and a solid-state drive for storing the OS and programs. You can buy a so-called silent or quiet PC from the Internet, build your own, or buy a purpose-built computer constructed by a specialist for dedicated audio use. That last option is the easiest way to assure that your…
One of my biggest surprises since I became the editor of Stereophile—and so started focusing more on all things audiophile—is how often I find myself thinking about the ethics of this hobby. This is unusual for me: I dislike moralism and prefer aesthetics to ethics.
A small example: Recently, while I was writing an audio review, I started to type the phrase "pride of ownership." I don't know who coined it, but I know I've read it more than a few times, and I've probably written it myself. It's so common that it's practically a cliché.
But that's not why I didn't type it. Rather,…