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In Reply to: Re: ...and your point is? posted by Dan Banquer on March 9, 2007 at 09:57:59:
sorry for offending.There is much that I don't know, but I'm learning all the time. The reason I liked that article, by the way, is not because there's anything in it that I thought was new, but because it was written from an engineering perspective but with respect for what other techy types deride as "audiophile values." It acknowledges from the beginning that high-performance audio is indeed high-performance, rather than acting as if a Circuit City CD player is as good as it gets.
I'm not saying it's new, only that it's uncommon in this world. So it's refreshing.
Follow Ups:
In this case, I will do you a professional favor. A far as the magazines, such as 'EDN', 'Electronics Design', 'Design News' etc, etc are concerned, they would not teach you much more about audio design, with only a few exceptions. Dan is simply in a position to bamboozle you with his slightly better knowledge of electronics design. For the receord, I read virtually all the magazines, and have consistently read them all for the the last 40 years. IF you really want to read something about electronic engineering design, then get a copy of 'The Art of Electronics' by Horowitz and Hill, and keep it on your reference shelf. Unfortunately, even the IEEE or the AES don't do much for audio electronic design, these days. The old stuff from the 60's-80's was very good, however.
Now, perhaps you can return the favor by giving me the title of a definitive book on electrical flow through a wire. No simple approximations, please.
...in college. I'm sure it's a good book, content-wise, but it was absolutely the worst-written textbook I've ever seen. Intolerable. Hope they've hired an editor since then.
Jim, you are missing the point. It is the information that is important, not the way that it is presented in this case.
By the way, once again, what is your recommendation for a reference book defining the most precise quantum model for current flow in a wire?
Expensive though--got a good science library nearby?http://www.cambridge.org/uk/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9780521855129
This is not a first-hand recommendation. It's probably pretty advanced, but the reviewer's comments suggest that it's accessible. Still, at best you'd need to do a lot of work to rigorously extract the implications of the physics to whatever problem you're currently working on.
This textbook looks very good. I'll check with Jack Bybee to see if he has it already. He picked up something similar a few years ago, and he might want to buy a copy of this book.
This is the sort of book that I have collected over the years, trying to find out why things do what they do.
As you know, I tend to believe my ears first, and then try to understand what I hear, through research papers or through measurement. I have found that this is essentially unappreciated on this website, for the most part.
> > By the way, once again, what is your recommendation for a reference book defining the most precise quantum model for current flow in a wire? < <Hi John. Sorry, I have no recommendation. That was never my area, and it's been 10 years or so since I've seriously studied a solid-state physics book. I would expect that any advanced textbook on the subject would be sufficient for your needs. I recall that Ashcroft and Mermin, a grad-level textbook, did a good job, starting with Drude theory then getting more sophisticated and dealing, in a reasonable way, with electron correlations and phonon effects. It's a slog, however. Took me two semesters to fight my way through it (though I'm pretty sure that metals were covered in the first term), even at a time when I was pretty good with the math.
There are some other folks on this board, I'm sure, that are more up to date than I am.
Thanks Jim, that is helpful. I have never heard of those authors before, and I have the graduate level version of text that JN likes so much, and some others, but they didn't tell me anything useful. That is why I initially wanted to look into Landau, but unfortunately I bought the wrong volume. If you ever get a copy of 'Electronic Properties of Materials' by Rolf E. Hummel, I think that you will be pleasantly surprised. Drude theory is not exact enough for me at this time.
As far as H&H are concerned, they did make a departure with their teaching style, BUT many of their topics are reasonably up to date, and can be useful. I even gave the late Bob Crump a copy for his reference, since it was readable by semi-technical people as well.
Thanks John. Re: Horowitz and Hill, I was in college at the time--still young--and something of a writing snob. Not that I could have done that much better, but I thought I could, and was appalled that a textbook could be so badly written. Actually, I know now it's not the writing but the editing. You don't necessarily expect electronics experts to be expert writers. But you DO expect publishers to be able to fix up the prose a little.I lost my copy of H&H (and the lab manual that goes with it) my senior year of college. I left my dorm room unlocked all the time, and someone went in and took it (along with some of my favorite records; I forget which ones. And some other things). I can't believe whoever took it really wanted a copy of "The Art of Electronics," but who knows. Anyway, I bet I could pick up a used copy cheap on amazon.com. I'll pick one up.
If you ever decide to do some serious investigation into electronic technology, you will probably come to the conclusion that audio is the bastard child of electronics. Marketing pays the bills, as many of us have observed.
d.b.
...but I don't disagree. And I know a lot of people in the industry agree as well.Still, it's great fun, and I've got enough of a rebellious spirit to believe that, though 99% of the work that defies (willingly or unwillingly) scientific orthodoxy is likely to be worse off for it) occasionally the result is something brilliant and special--and something that would be inhibited by too much focus on scientific orthodoxy. I am NOT saying what many of the mystics around here often say: That cutting edge science and technology, beyond what's known by the scientific establishment, is to be found in that Chinese factory where they make the "intelligent chip". I'm just saying that sometimes really smart people can do better work when they don't pay so much attention to the rules, so it's possible for a boutique amp to be special. Not often, but sometimes.
Call me a romantic, I don't care. ;-)
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