...analog device rules the opamp world :boxing: :yes: i guess im just partial to them since ive been using almost nothing but AD in the past two years @work.. Hey all, Regarding the "Burr-Brown" marketing blurbs... Im about to finish my EE degree, specializing in electronics... I havent spent a huge deal of time looking at Audio-Frequency Op-Amp applications (amplications?) , but am I the only one who's a little sceptical when it comes to companies touting their products using "--insert company famous for opamps in the past decades, recently bought up by TI--"-powered equipment? I mean seriously, the gain-BW products of todays "good" opamps are off the scale, even the "super-low-noise" units are more than useful for 20-20kHz purposes... i would suspect that using ANY opamp costing more than USD2.00 suited for audio-signal processing would make it IMPOSSIBLE for any listener to detect an audible diffference from brand to brand... same goes for the DACs. if audio design is even remotely like "other" electronics development, the real audible differences come from circuit design and board layout... ...but this is my uneducated-in-audio-circuits-opinion... I'd love for someone to right me on this (cuz im most certainly wrong).. So, question: what properties make a great audio opamp? Ie what is it that 10yr old BB units have which makes them sound better than fresh-off-press opamps of any brand? cheers, Mike PS, shameless plug: I used ~10 "anal-device" opamps making this board, two ADCs and one 8channel DAC. wonderful equipment, USAmps does a good thing by using them in their amps no doubt. the pic is of our (CSEM SA in switzerland) 3DCamera that won the '04 IST-prize (eropean electronics innovations competition) ... www.ist-prize.org if you wanna see a cool movie of what this cam does (realtime distance camera), check out: http://www.csem.ch/detailed/photos/p_531_3...eo_sequence.avi
Wow...a response dedicated to me I'm the sh!t :robot: Dunno what you're asking though...you mean what chips do I think are best, and what do I think make those chips better? To those questions, I have no clue. I have no clue how to read an even moderately complex circuit for that matter. I'm just dipping my feet in this. I'm proud that I know how to build a simple powersupply.... :blush: Hehe...so if that's what you were asking, sorry... w00t!
Thats exactly what Im asking... from the things I've learned, I can't see why car audio MFGs charge more for a product with Burr Brown op-amps than say Analog Devices OpAmps.. more rigidly: "how can they charge more for product-line X with brand-name opamps than for product-line Y, otherwise identical, with generic chips"? In high-frequency, low-noise, or low power applications, differences become more obvious... but in car-audio??? Could anyone point me to a thread where opamps have been discussed? Im actually kind of interested now, could be that there's really something to it... M :blink:
This is generally the impression that I get from the guys at DIYaudio.com's forum. B) They discuss SQ differences in various ways - the components used in the circuits (brands of caps, resistors, etc) - the actual circuit schematics themselves... But I haven't heard SQ claims, as regards which op-amp chip to use. I'm confused however, in your statements... Most car audio amps are discrete amps - the aren't op-amp based amplifiers, they use traditional componentry, and are therefore able to produce much more power than an op-amp based amplifier (aka: chip-amps, gainclones). To date, there has not been a chip amp marketed to the car audio community... Unless you count head units, that inherently lack power supplies, and therefore limit power output to that of a 12v rail op-amp circuit.
hmm I'm aware that opamps are not used to drive speakers... but they are used in the feedback circuits, crossovers and input stages, which puts them in the signal path and makes them crucial to sonic performance (I think?!) DIYaudio.com hey? Thanks, Mike
Well, that's traditionally true in the traditional product marketplace... ...but some designs now ARE being used to drive speakers - and with sonically superior results. The downside is power output.. you're usually talking about just a 50w or so amp channel, per chip-amp. But that's a variable too, for you to vary by chip and by design.
