Does anyone care to ask an amplifier designer a technical question? My door is open.


I closed the cable and fuse thread because the trolls were making a mess of things. I hope they dont find me here.

I design Tube and Solid State power amps and preamps for Music Reference. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, have trained my ears keenly to hear frequency response differences, distortion and pretty good at guessing SPL. Ive spent 40 years doing that as a tech, store owner, and designer.
.
Perhaps someone would like to ask a question about how one designs a successfull amplifier? What determines damping factor and what damping factor does besides damping the woofer. There is an entirely different, I feel better way to look at damping and call it Regulation , which is 1/damping.

I like to tell true stories of my experience with others in this industry.

I have started a school which you can visit at http://berkeleyhifischool.com/ There you can see some of my presentations.

On YouTube go to the Music Reference channel to see how to design and build your own tube linestage. The series has over 200,000 views. You have to hit the video tab to see all.

I am not here to advertise for MR. Soon I will be making and posting more videos on YouTube. I don’t make any money off the videos, I just want to share knowledge and I hope others will share knowledge. Asking a good question is actually a display of your knowledge because you know enough to formulate a decent question.

Starting in January I plan to make these videos and post them on the HiFi school site and hosted on a new YouTube channel belonging to the school.


128x128ramtubes

Showing 12 responses by analogluvr

I have been checking out some of your videos on YouTube, especially the one at burning amp I think it was. Loved it!  Really appreciate all your doing. 
@unrecievedogma I also have settled on a remarkably similar system. I use Altec 604E’s  run full range from a pair of atmosphere M60s.  Then off of a second Output  on my preamp I run a dahlquist crossover to a pair of 12 inch subs.  I usually have it set at about 60 hz. 
 I also have a pair of fostex T 900 super tweeters augmenting the top end. 
 I have owned a lot of gear including high end Tannoy‘s, apogee Divas, reference 3a grand veenas.  I find this to be the most enjoyable and best for me. No plans on changing anything. 
 When I go to the shows I find my rig to sound better than pretty much everything there, to me. 
Roger nice job handling Teo. IMO he embodies everything that is wrong in high end audio these days. 
That article is from a guitar amp perspective where it’s more common to overdrive. 
 I’ve tried power cords from Shunyata and XLO and have not heard any difference.  Shunyata one was there flag ship that was selling used for almost 2K. Nada. 
 That was before I really got into the hobby and started building some things and learned a little bit about how this stuff works. I thought there was something wrong with me that everybody could hear these drastic changes and I couldn’t! 
I think microphonics can sound euphonic. I built a Bottlehead be pre-and while it was fantastic the tubes in that application were very microphonic. It lends everything a rounder more robust sound as it’s like a delayed Feedback. 
 That is ultimately what made me get rid of it 
I can’t imagine living without my dual Kozmo pots now that I have them. I will never own another preamp without some sort of balance, preferably dual volume pots. 
 Hi Roger,One amplifier design that has always intrigued me is Bob carvers load invariant Sunfire Designs.  Honestly I don’t know the premise behind how they work but was wondering what you think of them from a knowledgable designer standpoint.I always thought if I went back to ribbon speakers that I would get one of those.