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76.25.70.1
In Reply to: RE: Ugly marketing literature does not make your case. posted by Tony Lauck on July 06, 2012 at 09:28:52
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.
Follow Ups:
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
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