4 Channel Portable Ganged Gain Mic Pre with Eden Preamps for Ambisonic Recording

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outrecording

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Feb 9, 2014
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I've gotten things sorted out more or less and wanted to change the subject of this post. The first page or two is me asking a lot of newbie questions about powering the Eden preamps and other questions that have been answered.  (Thanks to everyone who helped out!)

You can jump past all that to the first post of my design idea here:

http://groupdiy.com/index.php?topic=55387.msg715392#msg715392





I'm a little stuck trying to find a DC power source for the Eden preamps. I'm looking for a (preferably premade) 12V input, 15V output bipolar supply. Each Eden uses about 50mA, so with four of them I'll need at least 200mA.

I see a lot of power modules for AC to DC, for using transformers, etc, but not much for what I need. Is this just so super simple that a step up converter is all I need? Or something like this from Murata:

http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/BEI15-150-Q12P-C/811-2189-5-ND/2242609
 
Thanks. But I don't see that they have a DC input version. I can't use AC for this project. Something like that with DC input would be perfect.
 
I don't know of a single module, but tps65135 can do it, along with some linear tech parts. All solutions are based on switchers though.
 
It looks like it would work to me, and it runs at high frequency (330Khz) meaning the noise on the rails should be easy to filter with an LC filter.  Plus the single chip preamp inside the eden has good common mode rejection, so I think it would work out fine.

It is isolated, which is good, so your ground will be independent of your power source (don't want to hook the ground to your car, or wall wart, etc).

Schematic looks pretty much as simple as you are going to get ( a switch, a DC source and a fuse).  Should be able to run it off a DC wall wart or a battery.

Why not give it a try?

I am a bit confused and don't know how to analyze the RF emissions data.

You are going to need to find 50mA or so of 48V somewhere.  Also should be an isolated supply. 

Still planning on using the Fab module?  They don't seem to have much in the way of a schematic or a spec, might be better to use something with a datasheet.  And put enough filtering on it (the RevB of the Fab module says the ripple is down to 128mV from 266mV.  I don't think it needs to be that high, phantom noise is problematic because since it is a single supply none of it is common mode.)

It looks like a cute little module, and you could add filtering after it, but you may find a better alternative with a schematic.  I don't like to build anything that I don't get a schematic for (it kind of defeats the purpose of DIY), and unfortunately the no schematic (or limited schematic) is becoming more and more common.  (I remember hours tracing down a problem with the NV73 slow start circuit (they leave the slow start off of the schematic) just because I didn't have a schematic.).  Anyway  I recommend you refuse any kit where you don't get a schematic.
 
Thank you for that. I was thinking to use Fab module's phantom power supply powered from the 12V input.

Unfortunately the Fab power module is not currently for sale. Ruel said he's not happy with it yet. I suppose that could be "fortunate" then; if he's not happy with it, then I prob shouldn't be either.

I'll give this Murata a try and see how it goes.

For filtering, do you think something like this from Vicor would be overkill (price aside):

http://www.vicor-china.com/documents/datasheets/ds_microram.pdf

I'm sure I could cobble together an LC filter, but for this first project I'd like to keep my hands off it as much as possible. It will be somewhat of a mission-critical device, so I do t want my lack of skill to compromise the unit.

Thanks again
 
That seems to be limited to 30v and does 30 amps!

If the supply you choose needs additional filtering it is super simple LC is an inductor in series and a cap to ground, RC uses a resistor instead of an inductor( and has a larger voltage drop ) there are all sorts if configurations but very simple and calculators online will help.

See if you can find a small watt 48 volt supply or up to 52v is fine. The filter won't befuddle you, and may not be necessary most supplies have some ripple filter but phantom supplies should be well filtered
 
bruce0 said:
That seems to be limited to 30v and does 30 amps!

Ah, this is where my limited knowledge is falling short. It said 3-30Vdc input range, so I thought if it was after the power module, it would be getting 15v. So ok.

They do have a 20A version.  :) Again I thought as long as it was under 20A, I'd be fine.

(Btw, I'm reading daily trying to fill the gaps; currently in Electronics 101 type books. It'll be a while I think. But worth it!)
 
bruce0 said:
If the supply you choose needs additional filtering it is super simple LC is an inductor in series and a cap to ground, RC uses a resistor instead of an inductor( and has a larger voltage drop ) there are all sorts if configurations but very simple and calculators online will help.

See if you can find a small watt 48 volt supply or up to 52v is fine. The filter won't befuddle you, and may not be necessary most supplies have some ripple filter but phantom supplies should be well filtered

You're right. I prob won't screw up putting it together. When I looked at this site I thought I'd end up devoting another post to figuring it out.  Figuring I'm being a pest enough here... :-\

http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~fisher/lcfilter/

High pass or lowpass, and how to determine values...
Butterworth or other
Corner frequency value
Series or shunt, etc

So all the values needed to plug into this calculator will be based on the power supply's numbers, right?

And I would need to make two, one for the + and one for the -, correct?

Let me get my cup of morning joe to clear the cobwebs.

Thanks once again. I think I owe you a beer next time I'm back in the US, or a place to stay if you visit Taiwan.

 
No problem, yes to the beer (or Baijou), been to China many times but never to Taiwan.

Most of the noise will be high frequency, because the PSU is a high frequency switching inductor.  For instance your selected +/-15V supply is at 320K or something.  When you select the 48V supply, you can see what frequency it switches at... best if it is over 100K.  High frequency is good, makes it easier to filter. 

The audible effects come when the high frequencies create low order harmonic noise in the audible spectrum in the power rails which the amplifier can't reject.  For instance if your supply is running at 120Khz it will make noise at 60Khz, 30Khz, 15Khz, 7Khz, 3.5K and so on, and some places in between, and (Pretty much a chance for harmonics every nth beat...)... so if you filter out everything above say 1K (corner frequency) with a nice steep LC filter you will substantially reduce all the low order harmonics in the audible spectrum and have no effect on the audible spectrum, and you can do that with a light small capacitor and inductor (smaller than a grape).

You probably won't have low frequency noise (because the current draw is light, and the supply will have a reservoir of some kind) but if you do you can put in an additional resistor + reservoir cap (RC filter) which is also low pass  but can have a very low corner but can only cut 6dB per octave.  But this can be done with a small light resistor and capacitor and can have a corner frequency at 3hZ pretty easily (also smaller than a grape ).

Simplest explanation (missing details)

LC filters can be really steep (dropping much more than 6db per octave), but get big and heavy when they get to lower frequencies.

RC filters are less steep (6dB per octave) and drop some voltage across the resistor with current, but can be small and light and have a lower frequency corner.

Used together you can make the supply quiet, (but as I say you may not have a LF noise problem at all).

Anyway... for a PSU you want the filter to be low pass... (the impossible ideal is to have the supply provide +/-16V and 48V with ripple of 0V regardless of load )

Corner frequency - below the frequency of any significant noise, do HF's (1K...3K...) with LC and if you need it do LF's with an RC filter down low (for example 2.5hZ corner will cut PSU ripple at 20hZ to less than 1/8th of what it was without filtering)

Butterworth..series... shunt... not sure but I suggest something like the pictures below...  Place the PSU and LC filter away from (not too close) the audio circuit because HF's can radiate ...

Note:  Both these filters work the same way... like a simple RC filter (just think of the inductor as a resistor that has a higher value at high frequency and a lower value at low frequency.... So for DC, the LC filter gets much less voltage drop and is therefore more efficient for PSU low pass filters.  But inductors that can resist low frequencies get BIG and HEAVY.... so the RC filter is used to filter LF... but it is less efficient as it causes a voltage drop even at DC.... making heat for no reason)

In lay terms... the resistor by limiting current makes any increase in voltage flow into the capacitor slowly, and the capacitor stores any charge so if the input voltage falls the charge falls slower, so on the output any changes (noise) are reduced in amplitude... Bingo  low pass filter.

LC
Lowpass_Filter_LC.svg


RC
250px-1st_Order_Lowpass_Filter_RC.svg.png


The bottom is output ground , top is the 48V rail.

And yes... the filter you showed might work, didn't really look at the specs... but we were talking about 48V filtering (the phantom power is the most sensitive supply to noise) and 20Amps will power approximately 4000 average condenser microphones!  you only want 4 mic's.  You only need something tiny and lightweight for your portable preamp.

How are you planning on putting this together?  How big is it? Are you making a circuit board to put the eden's and PSU's on or mounting them to the case and wiring them up? Doing the rest on breadboard? 

I would suggest positioning the PSU's and power inlet at one end of the case and the stack of eden's and Audio ports at the other (3 inches apart is 16 times better than 1/2 inch apart, radiation decreases as the square of the distance).

Maybe a metal case for the whole preamp to reduce interference from cell phones etc. 

Maybe a steel "wall" or separator shield in the case between the preamps and the PSU, or an internal steel box around the PSU (these may not be needed, don't know how sensitive the Eden is to electronmagnetic interference) because the inductors on switching supplies can radiate electromagnetically (imagine little coils turning on and off 300,000 times per second).

I can't wait to see pics of this little baby.



 
Wow! I think that's more than I ever could have gotten out of any set of books on my own. Let me digest that for a bit and plug in some numbers to see what I come up with.

So it would seem prudent to first test it without a filter to see if one is really needed - as you mentioned it might not even be necessary. Living in Taiwan, I have a plethora of electronics shops to pillage if I need to make an LC filter.

bruce0 said:
How are you planning on putting this together?  How big is it? Are you making a circuit board to put the eden's and PSU's on or mounting them to the case and wiring them up? Doing the rest on breadboard?

I've emailed Frank from frontpanels.de about a metal case. After I figure out the size and holes to be drilled, I'm all set on that front.

I'd like it to be as small as possible, but might make some room to space things out as you mentioned. I've got a cheap metal enclosure I bought at an electronics store for a mockup. It measures about 14cmx19cmx4.5cm. Something around there would be nice. Once I can get all the components in hand I'll nail down the dimensions.

Mounting and wire up is what I'm thinking.

Because of the way my recording bag is laid out, I'd like to have the inputs on the right side and outputs on the left. If need be though, everything can be on one side.

bruce0 said:
I can't wait to see pics of this little baby.

I'll prob be embarrassed to show my shoddy work, but I owe ya that much at least. Can't wait to see it myself!
 
might be worth making provisions for a smaller internal box for 48V and +/-15V psu.  I assume battery will be external but if not put the battery between the PSU and the audio stuff. 

Your arrangement sounds fine, just making the point that you may save yourself a bit of hassle if you pay attention to where the PSU inductors are and/or shielding.

See if you can put a little metal box inside with the PSU in, or at least place it where you could put a U Shaped piece of steel between it and the audio wires.

You should have no trouble placing audio components and connectors where you want, just twist wire to pin 2+3 tightly for each connector and route them around the PSU, a little extra distance makes a big difference.

i dont know how a cm is
 
bruce0 said:
might be worth making provisions for a smaller internal box for 48V and +/-15V psu.  I assume battery will be external but if not put the battery between the PSU and the audio stuff. 

Your arrangement sounds fine, just making the point that you may save yourself a bit of hassle if you pay attention to where the PSU inductors are and/or shielding.

See if you can put a little metal box inside with the PSU in, or at least place it where you could put a U Shaped piece of steel between it and the audio wires.

You should have no trouble placing audio components and connectors where you want, just twist wire to pin 2+3 tightly for each connector and route them around the PSU, a little extra distance makes a big difference.

i dont know how a cm is

It has been a little while, but thanks for the info!

I've made a mockup of the inside parts with photoshop to try and get an idea what kind of space I have in there. I used my Tascam DR-680's dimensions as a starting point. That would be the largest I'd want to go. Looks like everything will fit in there fine, but finding the "perfect" layout is time consuming. :)

Everything is far enough away from the power source except my XLR (or TRS) outputs. The closest is 1 inch away. Not sure if that will be an issue.

When stacking preamps, how close do people generally stack them? As close as possible OK?
 
So over the past month, while waiting for my microphone to be repaired, I've been sourcing parts. You would think Taiwan would be a treasure-trove...but it's not.  :(  I've got a whole long street of electronic shops to pilfer, but they mostly stock the cheapest of the cheapest. I've managed to find some gems on local auction sites, but that's about it. Luckily most big US electronics retailers ship overseas. (if only ONE store would have everything I need. Spending $50 on $10 of parts is hard to swallow)

Everything's starting to come together though, and I'm pretty excited. One of my most complex issues surprisingly has been finding proper input/output XLR/TRS jacks. There are so darn many to choose from, especially with their grounding options. I've finally settled on some switchcraft XLR's. 

Switchcraft E3FSCBAU & E3MSCBAU

I think I'd like to go with TRS outputs to save space, but I'm stuck trying to decide which ones will work best for me. Will figure it out though!
 
One last thing I would like to throw out there for anyone...

I came across the attached picture that came from this page:http://www.tangible-technology.com/power/phantom_aug02.htm

This looks like a nice and neat way to attach my 6k81 resistors. Regarding the capacitor shown, it says "A local capacitor keeps the signal clean."

I've looked at preamp schematics and some show something similar. But looking at DIY preamp builds, I don't see this too often. Is this something necessary or simply "nice to have"?

 

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You should be fine. 1 inch should be fine.  My point was really that 1 inch is 4 times better than 1/2 inch when avoiding noise sources.

You should be doubly fine because the outputs that are close to the PSU have the least sensitivity (the inputs are amplified, but the outputs are even lower impedance and already amplified). 

I was trying to provide general guidance. My point was really that Switched mode PSU's can radiate, and distance is one way of mitigating that.  Design is a balancing act, but you are doing it right (outputs near the PSU rather than inputs, etc).

As far as stacking, no idea how close.  I should have said "all the edens" not a "stack of edens" however I think you can probably space them pretty close (standoffs? ), ask the expat audio guys that make them. It is probably just a matter of heat, I don't think crosstalk would be an issue at signal levels, but again ask the guys that make them.
 
I don't know how the Expat guys support phantom switching etc, is it on the board?  Do they have a suggested schematic?

There is a GREAT set of articles on the topic from thatcorp start with DN-140 (http://www.thatcorp.com/datashts/AES7909_48V_Phantom_Menace_Returns.pdf http://www.thatcorp.com/datashts/dn140.pdf ) if the eden folks don't have a schematic for you.  DN-140 deals with lots of phantom switching approaches, but not really filtering.  What supply are you using, let us know and we can take a look at the spec and make a recommendation but I suspect you can use something like the schematic mentioned below for filtering.

Any complete schematic of a phantom supply will have filtering caps on it (in combination with the supply resistors the stabilze the supply) but they don't necessarily have to be on each line (since you are tight on space, and connecting this to a "known" type of mic. ) or mounted directly to the XLR.  Also a filter arrangement would have a resistor before the cap, as you will see in most phantom supplies.

As an example look at page one of this schematic http://www.soundskulptor.com/pdf/mp66-schematic.pdf  The phantom power has a RC network to filter it (R7, C3) and another (r6, C1, and C2) and C1/C2 caps also act as a reservoir like the one you show in the picture.

I use the soundskulptor schematic as an example because this particular one has a switched mode supply in it (it is a tube preamp and has one for 250V SMPS supply is shown on the schematic. Incidentally you can see an LC and and RC filter are in use on the 250V supply before it hits the vacuum tube.  This type of LC/RC combination is typical (for low noise rails) and  I am sure will be the case in whatever SMPS (switched mode power supply) you choose)

 
Incidentally, RC filters are easy to figure and there are lots of calculators online for example http://www.muzique.com/schem/filter.htm

The RC filter in the aforementioned schematic uses 150R resistor followed by a 180uF cap (R7 and C3) plug those into that calculator and you get a "corner frequency" of 5.9Hz.  Which means the low pass filter will reduce the any signal (in this case noise) at 5.9Hz by 3dB... and it will reduce by 6dB more for every higher octave (6dB per octave) so 11.8Hz will be down 9dB and 23.6Hz (finally audible spectrum) will be down 15dB which is a lot. 

And then they put a second filter in, same values using R6 and C1 so double the effect (down 30db at 23.6Hz) and they put in a little .1uf cap (probably film or ceramic) which will deal better with very high frequencies. 

Rule of thumb guess, for your situation this would be a good filter for a phantom supply and the switching arrangement is good and would discharge the reservoir when phantom was switched off fairly quickly (see DN-140 for text on this).


Most SMPS noise is high frequency content, which will be dealt with partially by the LC filter (which is most likely already in the PSU).  The RC filter above will really stomp on that too because at 1K hz the filter is taking 66 dB approx off the (already relatively low) noise.
 
For it. Thanks! 

And stacking them won't be a problem according to Expat Audio. That will save a lot of space.

bruce0 said:
You should be fine. 1 inch should be fine.  My point was really that 1 inch is 4 times better than 1/2 inch when avoiding noise sources.

You should be doubly fine because the outputs that are close to the PSU have the least sensitivity (the inputs are amplified, but the outputs are even lower impedance and already amplified). 

I was trying to provide general guidance. My point was really that Switched mode PSU's can radiate, and distance is one way of mitigating that.  Design is a balancing act, but you are doing it right (outputs near the PSU rather than inputs, etc).

As far as stacking, no idea how close.  I should have said "all the edens" not a "stack of edens" however I think you can probably space them pretty close (standoffs? ), ask the expat audio guys that make them. It is probably just a matter of heat, I don't think crosstalk would be an issue at signal levels, but again ask the guys that make them.
 

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