2. amps-preamps
  3. 140029-80294

Does anyone care to ask an amplifier designer a technical question? My door is open.

I closed the cable and fuse thread because the trolls were making a mess of things. I hope they dont find me here.

I design Tube and Solid State power amps and preamps for Music Reference. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, have trained my ears keenly to hear frequency response differences, distortion and pretty good at guessing SPL. Ive spent 40 years doing that as a tech, store owner, and designer.
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Perhaps someone would like to ask a question about how one designs a successfull amplifier? What determines damping factor and what damping factor does besides damping the woofer. There is an entirely different, I feel better way to look at damping and call it Regulation , which is 1/damping.

I like to tell true stories of my experience with others in this industry.

I have started a school which you can visit at http://berkeleyhifischool.com/ There you can see some of my presentations.

On YouTube go to the Music Reference channel to see how to design and build your own tube linestage. The series has over 200,000 views. You have to hit the video tab to see all.

I am not here to advertise for MR. Soon I will be making and posting more videos on YouTube. I don’t make any money off the videos, I just want to share knowledge and I hope others will share knowledge. Asking a good question is actually a display of your knowledge because you know enough to formulate a decent question.

Starting in January I plan to make these videos and post them on the HiFi school site and hosted on a new YouTube channel belonging to the school.


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ramtubes's avatar
ramtubes OP
460 posts
 
@tomic601 5:38pm

RM I have a dead pair of ESL-63, pretty low serial numbers...thoughts on rebuild upgrade steps at same time?Ashamed to admit I dont really have a budget in mind....
My friend here has a dead pair too. Are your panels bad? Panels are harder to fix than the electronics. Panels go bad, its a shame they didnt use better glue. Do yours have the black grids?

DD amps stereo amps are $6,000. its up to you. 


ramtubes's avatar
ramtubes OP
460 posts
 
@ieales
Unless one subscribes to the idea that cables do not alter the sound, surely it makes more sense to replace bad cables than a good amplifier to correct system deficiencies.


If a system is not broken and has serious deficiencies cables will likely not correct the problem. How can they?

As I said in a previous post, sometimes a listener does not realize his system is broken and somethig needs to be fixed. 
ramtubes's avatar
ramtubes OP
460 posts
 
@goheelz  
Roger— thank you for sharing your expertise in this thread.
I would like to know your opinion of ideal amplifier type (and your rationale) for the following loudspeakers:  Vandersteen 5A/5A Carbon.  As you know, this product is relatively inefficient but uses active crossovers with bass amplification built in.

If you could specify examples by brand, that would be ideal, but I’m also interested in general advice re: power requirements, etc.

I dont know anything about that speaker. Im an ESL guy. I dont know why people keep trying to cure the shortcomings of the cone speaker. Sorry, I know most of you own cone speakers. 
noromance's avatar
noromance
9,865 posts
 
@tomic601 Call Sheldon Stokes in NH.
https://www.quadesl.com/quad_refurb.html
csontos
1,311 posts
 
Hey Roger. What are your thoughts on designing a ss amp to drive ESLs directly? I'm currently listening to Acoustat Monitor 3 with direct drive servo charge OTL monos. It seems the ultimate comparison between ss and tubes would be a shootout with such. I find directly driven ESLs to be the ultimate in transparency and so the ultimate test bed between the two major topologies.
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