Burson OpAmps - Consensus?

I have used them in the past, and generally liked their improvement in sound. Some models were a bit bright for my taste and equipment that they were installed in at the time. I no longer use them. The biggest flaw I encountered was the melting of the decorative outer covers. The Burson op-amps really need space to breathe, and the ones with the colored decorative outer shells (95% of their models) shouldn’t be left powered up for over 48 hours straight. If you drive them hard, the plastic outer shell can also begin to melt. They really are great op-amps, and I think worth the price, but just be aware of their heat and space/height limitations. I don’t remember if one could remove the outer shells or not. I do think that should be an option.

That's a great point and consideration.. Thanks... I've been leaving mine on perpetually - I should check that! Appreciate it...

We just dropped in a pair of Opamps into a Cary 306 SACD player with excellent results.  Not very expensive.  I have not compared those to anything but the stock ones in the Cary but it was a significant improvement in sound wuality.

I put Burson V5i in all 6 positions of my Jolida JD9 phono preamp and it was a huge improvement over stock.

?? Why not use something like the Texas Instruments OPA2205?

I looked at the Burson website and specifications on the performance of the opamp are notably absent. FWIW, there is no such thing as an opamp designed specifically for audio. That isn't how opamps work.

'Opamp' is a term for 'operational amplifier'. In its ideal form it has infinite gain and so must use feedback to control gain and distortion. The gain in practice is so high that the ratio between feedback resistor vs the input resistor determines the gain of the circuit. The TI opamps have about 130dB of gain and a Gain Bandwidth Product of 3.5MHz, which practically speaking means that they will be quite neutral if not asked to make more than about 20dB of gain.

Opamps must be used with negative feedback. To that end, they need something called Gain Bandwidth Product in order to allow higher amounts of feedback which is common in audio circuits. My reason for pointing this out is these crucial specs are absent from the Burson site- are they included with the product on shipping? If not it would seem to be a matter of trial and error to work out how much gain they are good for before colorations show up.

By comparison the TI opamp is a lot cheaper! Cheap enough that the comparison cost would be trivial if you already had the Bursons on hand.