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Re: Troubling comment from Mike Sanders (Quicksilver Audio)

The arguements seem to breakdown into 2 main issues:
1) Sound Quality, I think this arguement is overrated and with careful attention to board layout you can achieve the same level of sonic performance as point to point. Unfortunately PCB layout is one of those things you learn by experience.

2) Reliability
This is probably understandable - if you are designing for mass production then you will be specifying the cheapest PCB you can get away with. Thus a single sided board will be specified in preference to a double sided and 1 oz copper clad board will be specfied in preference to 2 , 3 or 4 oz copper clad boards.
This can be a component specification problem as well. For example I use 10 Ohm resistors in the cathodes of output tubes as a convenient point for measuring bias currents. I DELIBERATELY specify 1/4 Watt resistors so they act as fuses in case of a tube short. They blow clean and quickly. Using say a 2W resistor would just mean that a lot of heat is generated for a long time until something else in the circuit finally gives up the ghost (hopefully a HT fuse rather than a output transformer primary winding).

With proper attention to board material selection and design layout neither the sonics nor the reliability need to be a problem.

I've successfully laid out boards for a range of products from, for example, a photomultiplier based laser receiver with 2500 Volt power supply and a laser diode driver delivering 100 Amp current pulses with 10 us controlled edge speeds. A lot of high speed logic and RF PCB layout techniques can be directly applied to achieving good audio results.

Cheers,
Ian

It is more a matter of ENGINEERING your PCB for good sonics and reliability rather than PCB vs Point to Point


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