[TenTec] Audio equipment power and characteristics OT.

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

On 2/8/2011 8:48 AM, NL7VL wrote:
> Jerry,
>
> That's quite a bit to digest, with a lot of it over my head, but I do
> see things I agree with and some things I had not realized. I'd like to
> make sure I get this if you don't mind.
>
>> There are many factors in sound equipment, some due to active device
>> nonlinearities, some to clipping characteristics, and some to
>> impedance matching.
>>
>> Solid state circuits tend to swing almost all the way to the supply
>> and ground or + and - supplies and clip hard. Tubes tend to go
>> nonlinear before reaching the supply limits and so clip more gently,
>> from voltage rise on one extreme to current saturation on the other
>> extreme.
>
> OK, so that's one reason why a solid state amp sounds muddy when it
> clips and a tube amp will gradually distort. Turning a preamp up -
> whether it be solid state or tube, will gently push the tube into its
> nonlinear region.

Without massive feedback tubes, transistors, and fets are nonlinear in 
different ways. Different tubes have different transfer curves, some 
less linear than others.
>
>> There tends to be a whole lot more feedback in solid state circuits,
>> especially in low level stages using OP amps with open loop gains
>> 100,000 times the closed loop gain. While that takes out almost all
>> of the nonlinearities but retains the supply voltage hard clipping
>> limits. Sometimes there's some feedback around tube output stages and
>> output transformers, but not 99.9% like an solid state output stage.
>
> Then the passive devices that couple the tube stages and contribute to
> a tube amp's distortion characteristics? (Also at your last point,
> too.)

Yes. Even resistors can be a bit voltage sensitive changing value 
slightly as the voltage changes. Capacitors have storage effects and 
leakage that depends on the voltage across them, more of a factor with 
electrolytics.
>
>> With that high level of feedback, the solid state power amp's output
>> impedance is very low, far lower than the rated speaker impedance.
>> With a tube PA, the load impedance is matched by the source impedance
>> of the amplifier, in a solid state PA, the load impedance is the
>> lowest impedance that doesn't overload the PA devices or the power
>> supply. Its not the impedance that would have half the peak to peak
>> voltage that the amp did open circuit like it would be on a matched
>> tube PA. That low impedance adds much speaker damping so that the
>> speaker cone position is controlled closely by the AC voltage. Which
>> keeps a speaker with poor acoustics from ringing from transients as
>> much.
>
> As I think about this, the low end of the solid state tends to
> reproduce more cleanly than the tube, and this is because low impedance
> of the output transistors?

Yes, the speaker has a fundamental resonance at LF and if the enclosure 
doesn't damp that resonance you get a boomy bass that's always the same 
pitch. The Q of the enclosure and its resonant frequency have to match 
the speaker. So the low impedance from the amp can damp that speaker 
depending on the impedance of the connecting wires. There's where 
monster cables may have an effect. But to counter all the golden ear 
audio ideas there are the whole house systems with speakers stuck in 
walls and ceilings without enclosures wired with #22 through resistive L 
pads for local level control.
>
>> As for power rating, the advent of solid state has created new vistas
>> of audio power rating specmanship. One of the amps I liked the best
>> was good for a whole 0.2 watt but was class A solid state. It was
>> clean. But most musical instrument and home stereo amps are rated at
>> 50 to a few hundred watts. Speaker efficiency hasn't gone down,
>> ratings have grown with "inspired" techniques. Most are peak power,
>> not average, but peak to peak voltage squared divided by the load
>> (which gives a number conveniently 4 times "RMS Power"), and if
>> measured are measured with the supply the amp would be delivered with
>> replaced by substantial voltage regulated supplies so the power out is
>> what it would be on the leading edge of a key closing tone before the
>> power supply drooped (leading to lower power and clipping). I suspect
>> some is rated with a much lower load impedance than the amp is rated,
>> but since the solid state amp is a constant voltage source with very
>> low output impedance the amp does more power the lower the load
>> impedance, until its power supply croaks or the output devices melt
>> off their emitter lead inside the device package. The result of these
>> subterfuges is that an amp that probably really delivers 10 watts,
>> might be rated at 200 watts. Of course without the regulated supplies
>> and extra output device cooling not shipped with the amp, it can only
>> do that power if measured as peak to peak voltage squared divided by a
>> load impedance of a fraction of an ohm (where normally rated for 4
>> ohms minimum load Z) over one or two cycles of a 10 kHz keyed tone.
>> After a very short time, power supply droop and output device heat
>> takes over to limit the useful real output power.
>
> I wonder if some of the unbelievably high solid state ratings are
> taking into consideration the slewing power of the circuit - its
> ability to handle very sharp transients like the crack of a snare drum
> etc. Yesteryears speakers could not handle what is expected of them
> these days. Even back a few years, it wasn't that difficult to fry the
> voice coil with highs or separate the paper from the coil with lows.
> The new speaker engineering really impresses me.

The power rating is inflated to show those transient capabilities then 
rated at the peak to peak voltage instead of the RMS voltage on those 
peaks and since the amp is a voltage source, I suspect rated while 
running a low impedance load that would fry the amp if run at that 
impedance for more than a split second.
>
>> All it takes for feedback to a guitar's strings is delay from
>> circuits and the acoustics path between the speaker and the guitar to
>> have one cycle or an integer multiple of one cycle time delay. It
>> shouldn't matter much what the active devices are.
>
> Hmm. I'll have to look into that one. I believe you, I've just never
> considered the concept before.

Fundamental for any oscillator from ULF to ultra violet, output has to 
reach the input through a delay loop that makes the loop phase delay 
(including the gain stage(s)) an integral multiple of 360 degrees and 
the loop gain has to be at least 1.0. And sound travels something like 5 
seconds per mile velocity. About 1000 feet per second. So the wavelength 
at 1 KHz is 1 foot. At 100 Hz is 10 feet. Sometimes in a guitar amp 
there's a phase inverting switch just to cure unwanted feedback or to 
enable it. And there's attenuation because the wave from the speaker 
spreads in a semicircle so the energy density is dropping with the 
square of the distance from the speaker.
>
>> Tube preamps tend to not have the feedback of the solid state op amp
>> based preamp because its too hard to get excess gain in a tube amp
>> without getting hum and noise. To hard to get excess gain so there's
>> no serious feedback beyond a partly unbypassed cathode resistor. But
>> that makes the stage more susceptible to heater cathode leakage
>> injection 60 Hz hum.
>
> I see. But what about microphonics in tubes? I swear at times I can tell
> when someone is running tubes, whether it's CW or SSB. I can't imagine a
> solid state amp with those "ringing" attributes. And to me, it has the
> same quality that my Hammond M-3 would have when I would get a little
> ruff with it - or a guitar pick plucking strings over a really hot
> humbucker pickup.

We tried to ignore microphonics, but replaced many a tube because of them.
>
>> The there may be come effects from the coupling and bypass
>> capacitors, tubes using paper or mylar caps while solid state with
>> inherent low impedance uses miniature electrolytics of dubious
>> quality and not quite perfect approximations of real capacitors.
>
> So this get back to the point above - that some (of the older?) passive
> components can contribute to tube feedback effects through unintended
> coupling - yes?

Even more so with the poorer quality electrolytic caps used in solid 
state amps. Old electrolytics as power supply bypasses contribute 
unwanted feed back, eventually noticed as radio or amplifier 
motorboating, or in the worst case oscillation at mid audio frequencies.
>
73, Jerry, K0CQ