I phones suck....

Well, sure, Duke, it has to be. People talk of bi-amped or tri-amped, well, I guess this would be quad-amped, in other words, four amplifier stages, a mixture of custom built consumer units and a few pieces of pro audio thrown in. To do music right, you need tubes circuits for everything over about 80-120 Hz, and solid state for everything below 80 Hz. Tubes don't do bass well and vise versa. So you need both. Transistors do square waves well because they act like switches.

Since the interest is here, here is a photo from 2015 that I've posted here before that shows part of my system, the main control rack at the main listening position where you operate the stereo from.

View attachment 1064885
Dedicated circuit. And then all your stuff. :oops:
I do get what you're saying about the tone levels though. I lernt summin' today. 😆
What about sine wave, isn't it smoother? :terror:
 
Well, sure, Duke, it has to be. People talk of bi-amped or tri-amped, well, I guess this would be quad-amped, in other words, four amplifier stages, a mixture of custom built consumer units and a few pieces of pro audio thrown in. To do music right, you need tubes circuits for everything over about 80-120 Hz, and solid state for everything below 80 Hz. Tubes don't do bass well and vise versa. So you need both. Transistors do square waves well because they act like switches.

Since the interest is here, here is a photo from 2015 that I've posted here before that shows part of my system, the main control rack at the main listening position where you operate the stereo from.

View attachment 1064885
A good friend of mine designed the magnetic induction drive system for the Bang & Olufson series of turntables.

That thing was slick.
 
Dedicated circuit. And then all your stuff. :oops:
I do get what you're saying about the tone levels though. I lernt summin' today. 😆
What about sine wave, isn't it smoother? :terror:

Well, a sine wave is your typical analog musical waveform. Continuously variable with infinite positions between peak and zero crossing. Tubes handle them sell. Transistors don't want to do that because they want to switch full on or full off. But tubes are tricky and expensive (and bulky) so for years, folks have tried to force various ways into transistors behaving more like tubes, especially MosFETS and J-FETS because they are voltage driven like tubes.

I've yet to hear any of them succeed.
 
Then you wouldn't like my stereo. It has 17 steps to turn it on and a full rack of nothing but knobs to set up all of the crossovers and equalizers.
No! That sounds cool for an in-house sound system. You don't need 'character' in the amp sound like we 'rock' guitar players like to hear. When it comes to mix down, a system like yours would be awesome.
:cool:
 
Well, a sine wave is your typical analog musical waveform. Continuously variable with infinite positions between peak and zero crossing. Tubes handle them sell. Transistors don't want to do that because they want to switch full on or full off. But tubes are tricky and expensive (and bulky) so for years, folks have tried to force various ways into transistors behaving more like tubes, especially MosFETS and J-FETS because they are voltage driven like tubes.

I've yet to hear any of them succeed.
I don't think I wanna admit I know what you're talking about. :auiqs.jpg:
 
Back in the 1980s (or late 70s), my buddy started experimenting with his own constant current technology designed to keep the tubes in an ideal state of operation no matter what the load using a special LED he got from some university.

He used a custom built subwoofer that went below 20 cycles, a pair of QUAD electrostatic speakers just for the midrange and a pair of concert stadium horns hung from the ceiling as tweeters.

Real good sound.

Then he had a falling out with his bitch of a wife and walked out and left her, the stereo and everything.

Somewhere in the middle, we started experimenting in developing our own phono circuit that was pure resistive using a strain-gauge as a pickup instead of the usual magnetic phono pick up.
I've got one of those 'ultra thin tape' pickups under the bridge of my acoustic. Don't know if it is strain gauge though. Back to the subject though, I have a guitar tuner and a decibel meter on my iPhone.
 
A good friend of mine designed the magnetic induction drive system for the Bang & Olufson series of turntables. That thing was slick.

Yeah, B&O was very artsy stuff. Like Panasonic, ahead of its time. The Danish always had a slick new idea and very futuristic styling. Too bad there is no such equivalent today.

I supposed the magnetic induction drive was some way of isolating the platter from motor noise. I have three tables, each with their own approach. The one table shown in the picture is actually direct drive with a 24 or 32 pole synchronous motor with a bearing the size of the platter! It sits on a sorbothane isolation system I designed. Dead quiet and free of all room induction. Actually pretty nice.

Another table uses a three point spring suspension and the platter is driven by a very thin belt connected to a stand alone drive motor.

The third table has no tone arm to speak of, the stylus stays in place and the platter is brought to it as the groove winds in.

Ah! The joys of audio design! :SMILEW~130:
 
Yeah, B&O was very artsy stuff. Like Panasonic, ahead of its time. The Danish always had a slick new idea and very futuristic styling. Too bad there is no such equivalent today.

I supposed the magnetic induction drive was some way of isolating the platter from motor noise. I have three tables, each with their own approach. The one table shown in the picture is actually direct drive with a 24 or 32 pole synchronous motor with a bearing the size of the platter! It sits on a sorbothane isolation system I designed. Dead quiet and free of all room induction. Actually pretty nice.

Another table uses a three point spring suspension and the platter is driven by a very thin belt connected to a stand alone drive motor.

The third table has no tone arm to speak of, the stylus stays in place and the platter is brought to it as the groove winds in.

Ah! The joys of audio design! :SMILEW~130:
I Use to have 2 Thorens turntables, belt drives. They were from a radio station and had slip pads. Wish I still had them.
 
Yeah, B&O was very artsy stuff. Like Panasonic, ahead of its time. The Danish always had a slick new idea and very futuristic styling. Too bad there is no such equivalent today.

I supposed the magnetic induction drive was some way of isolating the platter from motor noise. I have three tables, each with their own approach. The one table shown in the picture is actually direct drive with a 24 or 32 pole synchronous motor with a bearing the size of the platter! It sits on a sorbothane isolation system I designed. Dead quiet and free of all room induction. Actually pretty nice.

Another table uses a three point spring suspension and the platter is driven by a very thin belt connected to a stand alone drive motor.

The third table has no tone arm to speak of, the stylus stays in place and the platter is brought to it as the groove winds in.

Ah! The joys of audio design! :SMILEW~130:
Yeah, the magnetic drive was designed to eliminate any drag that would affect the speed of the platter. It had a linear tracking arm for the needle, so no problem with that either.

Plus you could adjust the speed from 28 to I think 80 rpm in his original design.
 
No! That sounds cool for an in-house sound system. You don't need 'character' in the amp sound like we 'rock' guitar players like to hear. When it comes to mix down, a system like yours would be awesome.
:cool:

Well, the character you speak of is just even order harmonic distortion, the "warm" sound which the ear likes. It doesn't hurt anything even if a tube can be had to minimize it. Back in the 80s, we proved that low harmonic distortion (like 0.001%, what the industry touts as "good sound") is meaningless. We made amps producing something like 10% harmonic distortion that kicked ass all over the store bought stuff. The consumer industry lies.
 
I've got one of those 'ultra thin tape' pickups under the bridge of my acoustic. Don't know if it is strain gauge though. Back to the subject though, I have a guitar tuner and a decibel meter on my iPhone.

Doubtful, but you never know. A straingauge is basically a crystal whose resistance varies with pressure, but the output is the same at all frequencies. The typical phono pick up is magnetic with either a winding moving within a magnet(ic field) or a moving magnet moving around a winding.

The problem with them are twofold:
  1. Magnetic hysteresis (it clouds the music with a veil).
  2. Variable output with frequency. Because of this, the phono preamp input stage has to us an RIAA equalization circuit whose curve is the reverse of the magnetic pickup so that it all comes out flat so that the bass, treble and all are balanced as intended by the recording.
 
I Use to have 2 Thorens turntables, belt drives. They were from a radio station and had slip pads. Wish I still had them.

If you ever watch the movie A Clockwork Orange, you can see one of my tables in it. They show it in one scene. It looks like a turntable in a glass box.

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Made by a company called Transcriptors of Ireland. Good stuff.
 
Doubtful, but you never know. A straingauge is basically a crystal whose resistance varies with pressure, but the output is the same at all frequencies. The typical phono pick up is magnetic with either a winding moving within a magnet(ic field) or a moving magnet moving around a winding.

The problem with them are twofold:
  1. Magnetic hysteresis (it clouds the music with a veil).
  2. Variable output with frequency. Because of this, the phono preamp input stage has to us an RIAA equalization circuit whose curve is the reverse of the magnetic pickup so that it all comes out flat so that the bass, treble and all are balanced as intended by the recording.
I'll have to check it out. Probably some kind of thin microphone or something similar. It's actually under the bridge so it can't be strings vibrating in a magnetic field.
 
Doubtful, but you never know. A straingauge is basically a crystal whose resistance varies with pressure, but the output is the same at all frequencies. The typical phono pick up is magnetic with either a winding moving within a magnet(ic field) or a moving magnet moving around a winding.

The problem with them are twofold:
  1. Magnetic hysteresis (it clouds the music with a veil).
  2. Variable output with frequency. Because of this, the phono preamp input stage has to us an RIAA equalization circuit whose curve is the reverse of the magnetic pickup so that it all comes out flat so that the bass, treble and all are balanced as intended by the recording.
Many electric guitar players like that veil. They seek out PUPs for a particular 'sound.'
 
Having switched to iPhones only a few years ago, i much prefer them. Never had a problem withy cracking screens or apps costing extra $. Flows perfectly with my iPad and i love Apple Music. For me it’s a win.

You do need Apple everything. Old school people hate apple.. 😀
 
Yeah, the magnetic drive was designed to eliminate any drag that would affect the speed of the platter.
Interesting. Engineering overkill. I like it. Most companies don't bother dealing with pitch integrity or use a cheap electronic PLL circuit to feed back to the motor. Magnetic induction was a much more costly approach that only an audio purist with deep pockets would appreciate. :SMILEW~130:


It had a linear tracking arm for the needle, so no problem with that either.
Yep. Zero tracking error. My one table takes the opposite approach, instead of a swing arm or linear tracking arm, it eliminates the arm altogether and brings the record to the needle. Great sound but hard to set up, but it eliminates the inertial mass of the tone arm. Something like 1/10th gram tracking force. Records last forever. Very transparent.

image.php.jpeg
 
Interesting. Engineering overkill. I like it. Most companies don't bother dealing with pitch integrity or use a cheap electronic PLL circuit to feed back to the motor. Magnetic induction was a much more costly approach that only an audio purist with deep pockets would appreciate. :SMILEW~130:



Yep. Zero tracking error. My one table takes the opposite approach, instead of a swing arm or linear tracking arm, it eliminates the arm altogether and brings the record to the needle. Great sound but hard to set up, but it eliminates the inertial mass of the tone arm. Something like 1/10th gram tracking force. Records last forever. Very transparent.

View attachment 1064899
That looks like a UFO!! :eek:
 
Nice!! What's the tone arm? Same company?

Proprietary arm made by the same company. The arm only moves side to side not up and down. Only the headshell moves up and down, balanced by the thread running back to a weight stationed at the back of the arm. This gives you some idea what I mean.

005.JPG

P7040463.JPG
 

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