jFET mirrors?

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hildy

Active member
Joined
Sep 22, 2011
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25
Hey all. Attached is a schematic from the line input section of a mixer from a "big-name" brand of audio gear. Was wondering if anyone could share some info on what's up with the jfet pair (Q4208) being fed by the bipolar current mirror setup (Q4204), as well as the bipolar pair (Q4206) in this design.

The audio signal is coming into pin 4 on the 2SK3320. And why couple the op amp inputs to the power rail through the 1k resistors? bias for the BJTs on the 4580s?

interested in your analyses.

-hild
 

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the top of the schematic is cut off...

q4206 is cascode topology for high bandwidth.
q4208 is the actual differential long tail pair.

q4204 has half the circuit missing so hard to speculate.

JR
 
the top of the schematic is cut off...

q4206 is cascode topology for high bandwidth.
q4208 is the actual differential long tail pair.

q4204 has half the circuit missing so hard to speculate.

JR
brilliant. Thank you. The missing top half is just the other side of the stereo pair, identical to the shown diagram. Assumption is that Q4204 is an active current source set up with 4201 as a mirror. (I'm a little out of my depth here; feel free to chortle.)
 
Look up the term "active load," you see that type of cascode/current mirror design in discussion of op-amp circuits a lot. It has better gain than just using collector resistors. Seems unusual to have an extra gain stage in front of an op-amp like that for a line stage rather than mic amp.
 
The NPNs are not a current mirror. The JFETs provide high Z but the NPNs provide low noise open loop gain. The op amp is just servo-ing the + input to match -, diffing to unity and providing a low-Z out. Not obvious what the advantage of being cascode is here.

At least that's my immediate guestimation. If I look at it again tomorrow morning I'll probably change my mind.
 
The NPNs are not a current mirror. The JFETs provide high Z but the NPNs provide low noise open loop gain. The op amp is just servo-ing the + input to match -, diffing to unity and providing a low-Z out. Not obvious what the advantage of being cascode is here.

At least that's my immediate guestimation. If I look at it again tomorrow morning I'll probably change my mind.
(again, out of my depth here) - but after JohnRoberts enlightened us here on the cascode topology, my first thought was, "why exactly?". I suppose there is always a reason to take something as commonplace as a line input and make it more hi-tech or hi-fidelity, but at the end of the day, it seems like diminishing returns. But then again, it lets you write "new and improved" on the retail box. That and blue LEDs.

I was thinking the NPN pairs over on the left hand (Q4201, 4204) of the schematic were doing some sort of current-regulation magic.
 
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