[quote author="Flatpicker"][quote author="paul wolff"]There are two advantages with this design...[/quote]Believe it or not I?ve been researching this very thing! Great minds think alike, don?t they, Paul? Just kidding, of course, but I will catch up with you? in 2 or 3 lifetimes. :wink:
Seriously, I was only trying to get the power op-amp stage out of the loop. I never thought about the output transformer interacting like that. Great info - gives me even more to ponder when I?m lying awake unable to sleep at night. (Does anyone else have that problem? It?s getting rather severe!)
Anyway, let me join in with Jakob and say welcome![/quote]
Thanks.
This whole thing started as a sure way that nothing I did was similar to my old company, for 2 important reasons. One, I didn't want to be a cloner. Two, I wanted to stay clear of any legal issues. In the process of doing this, I defined the old days as "the box". I now had to think outside the box in a literal way. When I tried the output stage outside the loop, there were some interesting results. It's one of those "the way it used to be" things that was no more than simply the way they used to do it, not for technical reasons, but just because that's the way they did it. Once feedback came along, everyone thought that it was the grand solution. With this, it became clear that the strangeness in the transformer was getting fed back, then into the transformer and fed back over and over, almost like a real fast reverb. I haven't been able to measure it, but with live instruments it sounds clearer or more open, without being brighter. Very interesting.
I have always thought that op-amps with too much gain don't sound as good even though they have lower distortion. My new one has about 85 maybe. Most now days have between 120 and 200 dB of gain. There has to be an effect if you are feeding back 194 dB of signal. I also broke the bias rule of equal bias junctions per output junction. I found that with more bias junctions, the temp linking between them and the output stages reduces the bias if it gets too hot, which isn't a bad thing. At least it isn't like the old power amps that once they blow up, they can't be fixed because when you turn them on they go zzzzzzziiiiippppp POW as they bias themselves into a black hole.
By the way, I think Mackie finally got it right in their advertising when they say "if your songs suck, they will still suck, but you will be able to work faster" or something like that. Kind of sums up the whole industry.
Check this out: http://www.tonelux.com/PT.jpg I think this might be the first DAW.