Tag: ETF.18

Short of sand

Firstly, my apologies. It’s been long overdue to get back on this blog. I receive several emails from people asking me to share more. I hope I will, when I get the time and energy to get back on hi-fi audio projects. I still work a lot on synthesisers which keeps me very busy when I catch a glimpse of free time from my hectic day life.

We’ve all been hit by the short of semiconductors. Yet, the HV precious parts are in shortage as well. Luckily some of the key parts like LDN150 and IXTP08N100D2 are back in stock, not sure for how long. These are key parts for building any CCS or hybrid mu-followers for audio circuits.

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Hybrid Mu-follower (aka Gyrator) Rev08 PCB Update

It’s been far too long since I last posted on this blog. With the limited spare time I’ve got these days, I concentrated in setting up the new workshop and system since we moved back to our place. I’m nearly there, so now it’s time to get back to work

I made some updates to the “gyrator” PCB. I’ll stop referencing it gyrator from now on, since the name is misleading. However, it got popular that way. Nevertheless, it’s a hybrid mu-follower circuit but if only if you take the output from the anode, it behaves like a “gyrator” from a frequency response perspective. If you’re interested in this circuit in more detail, please read the lecture I gave last year at ETF.18. You can download it from here.

Back to the board, here are the few changes made:

  1. Moved the trimpot P1 for easier fixing of the board with the M3 standoffs.
  2. Added a gate stopper resistor (R9) to avoid oscillation at low anode current (<10mA) when using high-gm MOSFETs in the lower position J4. This was evident with devices like BSH111BNK
  3. Added an LED (D4) indicator and a series resistor (R8) at the drain of M3. This enables indication of:
    1. Normal operation subject to  value of R8
    2. Source current into load (e.g. like in A2 operation) subject to value of R8.
    3. Short output to ground. Depending on duration and current limitation of power supply, this may prevent damaging M3 MOSFET. Not guaranteed, but in some scenarios will work.

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ETF.18 DHT Preamps Lecture

ETF.18 has been an emotional journey. I moved house literarily when I got back from ETF so my life has been more than hectic over the past few weeks.

I promise I will do a write-up of this amazing experience. There’s a lot of people out there who would love to attend so is my duty to reflect and share as much as I can.

In the meantime, I wanted to share the lecture I gave at ETF on DHT preamps. It was a challenge on its own but went really well. This was my first ETF and without knowing the audience I had to guess the level of detail, entertainment and expectations of an unknown audience. I knew a fair bit of the ETF folks, but audience was big and wide.

I struggled to find the time to prepare this lecture I have to confess. Between moving house, house building works, my second daughter’s arrival , weekly work travel and everything else, I seemed not to find the time to get this done. Thank you Morgan Jones and Rod Coleman for proof-reading and making this an easier task.

I hope you enjoy it. There are some notes on the slides I put together for the people who didn’t attend ETF. Otherwise the slides aren’t of much use on their own.

I’m writing this blog entry whilst enjoying the lovely Bourbon that Pete Millett gave me on the way back. Thanks Pete!

ETF Lecture on DHT Preamps (with notes):

DHT-Preamps-ETF2018-final-notes

ETF Lecture on DHT Preamps (slides):

DHT-Preamps-ETF2018-final