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In Reply to: RE: what's wrong with an "op-amp"? posted by AbeCollins on July 06, 2012 at 08:21:57
The linked reference is ugly marketing hype. The copy is borderline unethical. One should sell by promoting the virtues of one's product, not by denigrating one's competitor's. Some of the statements are false as well:"This fabrication process can not create parts like the 1% tolerant metal film resistor, or the super stable silver mica capacitor (please see table above to compare how discrete parts are different to their intergraded substitute) Since they are all connected (hence integrated) they can not be individually tested and matched."
A well known technique is to laser trim the components of an IC. There are many patents on various ways of doing this that go back to the 1970's, as can be readily seen by a simple search of the US Patent data base.
Burson may (or may not) produce good sounding products and their engineers may or may not be competent and ethical, but their marketing department and by extension senior management are unethical. Accordingly, I would not do business with them based on this single web page.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Follow Ups:
It is a common belief among many well respected and experienced high-end audio designers (not just Burson) that IC Op-Amps, IC volume controls, and the like, are to be avoided in favor of discrete components for those components that are in the audio signal path.
Some designers will argue that you have much more control over the design that way rather than relying on off-the-shelf ICs that offer the designer very little control.
To each his own but I tend to favor fully discrete designs if only out of my greater respect for the designer who chooses to create his own building blocks from the ground-up rather than plug-in an IC Op-Amp.
True and I agree, but TL does not seem to embody such well known electronics issues.
Not sure how one "embodies an issue", but if this is possible I certainly don't want to "embody" inaccurate and/or dishonest marketing literature, no matter how good a product might happen to sound. Once dishonest vendors are admitted there is no end to they possibilities of being cheated. Even a completely honest review may be inapplicable, because the reviewer might have been given a specially tweaked unit unrepresentative of typical production units or production units that have been in service for some time.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Like with almost everything else audio execution matters more than the technology chosen.
I own a Burson DAC that sounds spectacular but it has it's limits, flip side, one of the best preamps to ever grace my system is the Esoteric C03 which relies on ICs exclusively for gain control and signal amplification duty.
Its level of transparency and neutrality only bested by the SMc VRE-1, which is again all discreet...
I do admire though like you do a designer who goes through the pain of conceiving all elements of the circuit but I don't necessarily equate it to superior sound, just a respect for the craftsmanship.
. . . a designer who goes through the pain of conceiving all elements of the circuit
Is there any evidence that designing circuits using op amps is inherently easier than using discrete transistors? I don't know of any.
On a different point. If I wrote down all I know about pro Audio, it wouldn't fill a postage stamp but has there been a record made in the last 30 years that hasn't been processed through an op amp or ten before getting to market? Just curious.
To be clear we have to make the distinction between Op-Amp an IC Op-Amp.
It is much easier to use an IC Op-Amp in a gain stage vs design from the ground up with discrete transistors, resistors, capacitors, diodes, etc.
An IC Op-Amp can contain a dozen or more transistors. All the designer needs to do is add a couple resistors and a cap or two around it using the application note (cheat sheet) provided by the chip manufacturer.
That's a better argument, but it's probably not one that a chip designer is going to make. :-)
Some boutique designers have a bias against use of integrated circuits. They feel these don't justify their value added and don't enable them to sell products at a high price due to obvious component and build costs. I am not a target customer for these designers. I am interested in how something sounds and not in how this sound is technically achieved. I don't look for additional ego satisfaction from having spent a lot of money.
Really great designers know how to make the best out of any set of components. I had a friend who ran a small company that designed, manufactured and sold instrumentation sensors. These products were built entirely from inexpensive off the shelf components. The value added was in the way different components were combined to make the final product. A competitor could reverse engineer the product, but if they ordered the cheap parts the result would be a non-working unit. They could combine off-the shelf parts and get working units, but it would be at the extra cost of premium high precision parts.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
"The value added was in the way different components were combined to make the final product."
Yes indeed, that's a good insight!
Interestingly enough it even ties right in with the audiophile notion that less is more. But doing it well requires an especially clear understanding of what's really going on which often occurs ex-post-facto since parts can be cheap compared to being late to market. Thus the second and especially the third generation of something will often have fewer parts yet better performance.
Rick
Wow... I had to block pictures on my ipad so I didn't realize that the link wasn't just from a gullible audiophile, it sure sounded like it was!
Ironically parts matching is one of the things that IC's are especially good at and a weakness of hybrids and discretes. Of course I'm used to using integrated circuits, not intergraded ones, perhaps they are a degraded version?
I'm sure Abe doesn't believe everything he reads on the internet.
Rick
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