Small Signal Audio Design

Small Signal Audio Design is a highly practical handbook providing an extensive repertoire of circuits that can be assembled to make almost any type of audio system. This fully revised third edition offers new chapters on tape machines, guitar electronics, and variable-gain amplifiers, plus much more new material.

Small Signal Audio Design is a highly practical handbook providing an extensive repertoire of circuits that can be assembled to make almost any type of audio system. The publication of Electronics for Vinyl has freed up space for new material, (though this book still contains a lot on moving-magnet and moving-coil electronics) and this fully revised third edition offers wholly new chapters on tape machines, guitar electronics, and variable-gain amplifiers, plus much more. A major theme is the use of inexpensive and readily available parts to obtain state-of-the-art performance for noise, distortion, crosstalk, frequency response accuracy and other parameters. Virtually every page reveals nuggets of specialized knowledge not found anywhere else. For example, you can improve the offness of a fader simply by adding a resistor in the right place- if you know the right place.

Essential points of theory that bear on practical audio performance are lucidly and thoroughly explained, with the mathematics kept to an absolute minimum. Self's background in design for manufacture ensures he keeps a wary eye on the cost of things.

This book features the engaging prose style familiar to readers of his other books. You will learn why mercury-filled cables are not a good idea, the pitfalls of plating gold on copper, and what quotes from Star Trek have to do with PCB design.

Learn how to:

• make amplifiers with apparently impossibly low noise

• design discrete circuitry that can handle enormous signals with vanishingly low distortion

• use humble low-gain transistors to make an amplifier with an input impedance of more than 50 megohms

• transform the performance of low-cost-opamps

• build active filters with very low noise and distortion

• make incredibly accurate volume controls

• make a huge variety of audio equalisers

• make magnetic cartridge preamplifiers that have noise so low it is limited by basic physics, by using load synthesis

• sum, switch, clip, compress, and route audio signals

• be confident that phase perception is not an issue

This expanded and updated third edition contains extensive new material on optimising RIAA equalisation, electronics for ribbon microphones, summation of noise sources, defining system frequency response, loudness controls, and much more. Including all the crucial theory, but with minimal mathematics, Small Signal Audio Design is the must-have companion for anyone studying, researching, or working in audio engineering and audio electronics.

Autorentext

Douglas Self studied engineering at Cambridge University then psychoacoustics at Sussex University. He has spent many years working at the top level of design in both the professional audio and hi-fi industries and has taken out a number of patents in the field of audio technology. He currently acts as a consultant engineer in the field of audio design.

Klappentext

Small Signal Audio Design is a highly practical handbook providing an extensive repertoire of circuits that can be assembled to make almost any type of audio system. This fully revised third edition offers new chapters on tape machines, guitar electronics, and variable-gain amplifiers, plus much more new material.

Zusammenfassung

Small Signal Audio Design is a highly practical handbook providing an extensive repertoire of circuits that can be assembled to make almost any type of audio system. The publication of Electronics for Vinyl has freed up space for new material, (though this book still contains a lot on moving-magnet and moving-coil electronics) and this fully revised third edition offers wholly new chapters on tape machines, guitar electronics, and variable-gain amplifiers, plus much more. A major theme is the use of inexpensive and readily available parts to obtain state-of-the-art performance for noise, distortion, crosstalk, frequency response accuracy and other parameters. Virtually every page reveals nuggets of specialized knowledge not found anywhere else. For example, you can improve the offness of a fader simply by adding a resistor in the right place- if you know the right place.

Essential points of theory that bear on practical audio performance are lucidly and thoroughly explained, with the mathematics kept to an absolute minimum. Self's background in design for manufacture ensures he keeps a wary eye on the cost of things.

This book features the engaging prose style familiar to readers of his other books. You will learn why mercury-filled cables are not a good idea, the pitfalls of plating gold on copper, and what quotes from Star Trek have to do with PCB design.

Learn how to:

• make amplifiers with apparently impossibly low noise

• design discrete circuitry that can handle enormous signals with vanishingly low distortion

• use humble low-gain transistors to make an amplifier with an input impedance of more than 50 megohms

• transform the performance of low-cost-opamps

• build active filters with very low noise and distortion

• make incredibly accurate volume controls

• make a huge variety of audio equalisers

• make magnetic cartridge preamplifiers that have noise so low it is limited by basic physics, by using load synthesis

• sum, switch, clip, compress, and route audio signals

• be confident that phase perception is not an issue

This expanded and updated third edition contains extensive new material on optimising RIAA equalisation, electronics for ribbon microphones, summation of noise sources, defining system frequency response, loudness controls, and much more. Including all the crucial theory, but with minimal mathematics, Small Signal Audio Design is the must-have companion for anyone studying, researching, or working in audio engineering and audio electronics.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: The Basics

Signals

Amplifiers

Voltage amplifiers

Transconductance amplifiers

Current amplifiers

Transimpedance amplifiers

Negative feedback

Nominal signal levels and dynamic range

Frequency response

Frequency response: cascaded stages

Phase perception

Gain structures

Amplification then attenuation

Attenuation then amplification

Raising the input signal to the nominal level

Active-gain-controls

Noise

Johnson noise

Shot noise

1/f noise (flicker noise)

Popcorn noise

Summing noise sources

Noise in amplifiers

Noise in bipolar transistors

Bipolar transistor voltage noise

Bipolar transistor current voltage

Noise in JFETs

Noise in opamps

Noise gain

Low-noise opamp circuitry

Noise measurements

How to attenuate quietly

How to amplify quietly

How to invert quietly

How to balance quietly
Ultra low-noise design with multipath amplifiers

Ultra low-noise voltage buffers

Ultra low-noise amplifiers

Multiple amplifiers for greater drive capability

Chapter 2: Components

Conductors

Copper and other conductive elements

The metallurgy of copper

Gold and its uses

Cable and wiring resistance

PCB track resistance

PCB track-to-track crosstalk

The 3-layer PCB

Impedances and crosstalk: a case history

Resistors

Through-hole resistors

Surface-mount resistors

Resistor series

Resistor accuracy: two resistor combinations

Resistor accuracy: three resistor combinations

Other resistor combinations

Resistor value distributions

The uniform distribution

Resistor imperfections

Resistor excess noise

Resistor non-linearity

Capacitors

Capacitor …