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Re: perspective/thoughts

203.216.49.44

Ric,

When it comes to other people's designs, whether I am listening to them or modifying them, my fundamental philosophy is to appreciate the unit for what it is and what the original designer intended it to be, rather than being disappointed with it for what it isn't.

Therefore, when I am modding someone else's design, I have two self-imposed rules as to what I consider kosher practice and what I don't. My first rule is that I won't introduce technology that the stock unit doesn't already have. So if it's opamp, it stays opamp, if it's discrete solid-state, it stays SS, and if it's tubes, it stays that way.

My second self-imposed rule is that if I feel that the original designer put in a credible attempt at voicing the unit in a musically valid way, I will try my best to keep that basic tonal personality. If I feel that the original designer couldn't be bothered with what the unit actually sounded like, I wouldn't have bought that unit in the first place. The same would be true if I disagreed with the basic tonal personality of the stock version.

Maybe it is because I am an audio designer myself, but I always make it a point to pay as much respect as possible to the technological and aesthetic choices of other designers. To do otherwise just wouldn't feel right.

Now if it was my own design, I wouldn't feel at all guilty about pulling out all the stops :-). I'd use a discrete solid-state circuit for the output stage, probably going for a mixture of JFET, bipolar, MOSFETs, and DC servo opamp in a folded-cascode or perhaps a current-mirror topology, built on a really good PCB material like teflon and/or in an air-dielectric construction. I'd undoubtedly go nuts about the components, too. I don't know what I would do about the I/V converter; maybe just use the good old AD811 but in a bootstrapped configuration, taking the level-shift reference either from the output backward (NFB) or from the input forward (feed-forward).

Should be an interesting project. :o)

regards,
jonathan carr

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