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RE: you miss my point

Posted by rick_m (A) on August 6, 2011 at 07:25:11

In Reply to: RE: you miss my point posted by b.l.zeebub on August 6, 2011 at 06:07:57:

"Somebody who knows a lot more about these things told me once that the theoretical minimum noise floor for analog circuits is -132dB at unity gain."

The absolute limit of the noise floor is the thermal noise energy which is a function of the absolute temperature and bandwidth. It's just the electrons rattling around from the heat, throw in some resistance and their motion shows up as a noise voltage.

And that's if the components are perfect, usually they aren't and have other mechanisms that make them noiser, since they don't HAVE to be we call it excess noise and that's the stuff that gets improved with better parts.

Folks that are really fussy, I'm thinking astronomers here rather than audiophiles, tweak their front-ends by immersing them in LN2 so they keep their cool. So far I have not heard of any of us taking that plunge...

I don't know what the -132 dB refers to off hand.

Regards, Rick

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