Buen día senior Atferrari
This is not a rant but a couple of questions.
It wouldn't matter if it was!
You can find posts recurrently suggesting, instead of building, to use the latest audio amps, say, by National Semiconductors because they achieved a very low level of distorsion, very low level of noise with the added bonus of being much easier to implement if a proper PCB is implemented.
I would go farther than that: if you want a good amp and speakers to listen to and enjoy, don't waste your time building anything- just buy a commercial amp. In the UK you can get a decent amp for around £200 UK and a decent pair of speakers for £120 UK- just wire up and you are all set. That is new; if you buy used you can do much better.
When my house is finished I will be buying new- speakers and amp - no messing about with bits of solder and drilling chassis.
On the other side, you and so many, dedicate uncountable time to build from scratch amplifiers that hopefully will achieve good (better?) performance if compared with the commercial ones.
It depends what you mean by 'better' and 'commercial ones [amps]'
There is wide range of amps on the market ranging from the awful to the absolutely out of this world. The prices range from £20 UK up to £50K UK and more.
So how do you choose? What you do is to find the kind of sound you like and the speakers you like because the amp and speakers need to be matched (not talking about impedance here) for a balanced sound that you like. Like all things in life there is sweet spot where the more you spend the less improvement you get. So my advice is to find what you like in both speakers/headphones and then an amp to suit.
To give you a couple of examples, if you have a bright sounding amp and bright sounding speakers the result will be a toppy, edgy sound, and the opposite: a smooth amp and smooth speakers will result in a dull sound overall. This is a complicated subject and I have just skimmed the surface.
I know there are the audiophools, audiophiles plus experienced DIYers and EEs that can handle the technical part of this.
Once again, it depends- some hobby amp designers/constructers are in the expert class. They have normally been at it for years and have a thorough understanding of electronics- many on ETO for example. Many are also professionals. They build some incredible amps, which are generally referred to as esoteric or audiophile.
Best not to attempt that sort of amp. Not only are they temeramental and difficult to get working perfectly, but the components cost a fortune: £50 UK upwards for one capacitor, for example, and that is not to mention the transformer, semiconductors, case, and heatsinks.
Many times as well, I've read, mostly by Audioguru or maybe Nigel, saying things like: "... the XXXXX amp sports a 0,00002% distortion plus -xxx dB of noise, that anyway you will never could hear".
I have never heard those specific amps, but if they say the amps are superb, they are bound to be. If they are easy to build and well behaved that would be a good way to go, if that's what you want. This is not about those amps but in general- don't overly rely on technical specifications. You can get one amplifier with say 0.1% distortion and another with 0.001% distortion and the first will sound better. The way that the ear/brain interprets sounds is complex and not fully understood, but there are a lot of established ground rules. Just to give you a clue, speakers have relatively high distortion levels, not to mention studio recording equipment.
Is it all about people doing it just for the pleasure of reinventing the wheel, building is own wheel or just learning how to build one? After all, from all what I read, heard, talk and done, besides PSUs, audio, seems where most people started with when they knew nothing about electrons and what they could be used for.
That sums it up in one. There is the other type who builds to save money, like me when I was a student. I built an amp that certainly wasn't near the audiophile class, but it cost me practically nothing, and it did sound a lot better than the average hifi that most people had at the time. I also built the speakers for about a third the cost of the commercial equivalent.
I listened to that system a lot over the following 10 years and thought it sounded fine. Then I heard a good commercial system- not terribly expensive- and it completely transformed the sound of my records (disks). It was like having a new record collection. You heard sounds that you had never heard before. My amp went in the cupboard, and I never used it for serious listening again. About 2 years ago, I did listen to it and could not believe how bland it was compared to modern amps. Everything is relative!
Is there a real chance that a single soul could build something that corporate engineering cannot achieve? Probably not so often, isn't it?
Not a chance, if you are talking about an ordinary single soul. The top amps are 50% engineering and 50% black art. I have heard some home-made amps that are in the audiophile league though. Only a few people have audiophile amplifiers, just like only a few people have Ferrari cars. Most people simply would not notice the difference between a very good amplifier and an audiophile amplifier, especially as they probably wouldn't have audiophile speakers/phones to match.
If you mean, can the home constructer build a very good amplifier cheaper than one you could buy- definately.
In case you, Nikolai or anyone reading this will take this as a pejorative comment, please be aware that I am also involved in learning to build some wheels whether a DSP filter with a simple micro or, lately, a fully analog PID controller. My list is long.
Interested on your comments.
You're a gentleman atferrari.
Audio Amps
Here is a summary of what I think:
(1) If you just want a hifi system to listen too, don't waste your time. Buy one new, or if you are prepared to shop around, buy second-hand. A halfway-house is to buy a commercial amp, even a faulty one, and modfy it with your own circuits. I have done this many times, and in the end all that was left was the case and switches etc. One of the hardest parts of building an amp for everyday use is making the case and this approach gets around that problem. You will also get all the electronic parts from the original to use for your other projects.
(2) If, on the other hand, you want to get some experience of building an audio amp, go for a simple class A/B design with discrete transistors. That way you will get a feel for what is actually going on, and you can still listen to it.
(3) If you just want to build a hifi amp, the integrated circuit approach is by far the simplest and would give the best results, from the little 2W chips thru the LM3886 up to the latest wonders that Audioguru and Nigel are talking about.
(4) As for audiophile amps, I don't want to put you off, but I would leave that for a while. The normal amps are very good these days anyway.
Finally don't worry about asking questions, however basic. I for one, would be only too pleased to help out as would many other members on ETO, I'm sure. And you didn't high-jack this thread at all: if you want to see high-jacking just look at some of the stuff I have posted here. By the way, if you want to PM me any time, go ahead.
sorry, I was careless.
