2. amps-preamps
  3. 140029-80294

Does anyone care to ask an amplifier designer a technical question? My door is open.

I closed the cable and fuse thread because the trolls were making a mess of things. I hope they dont find me here.

I design Tube and Solid State power amps and preamps for Music Reference. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering, have trained my ears keenly to hear frequency response differences, distortion and pretty good at guessing SPL. Ive spent 40 years doing that as a tech, store owner, and designer.
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Perhaps someone would like to ask a question about how one designs a successfull amplifier? What determines damping factor and what damping factor does besides damping the woofer. There is an entirely different, I feel better way to look at damping and call it Regulation , which is 1/damping.

I like to tell true stories of my experience with others in this industry.

I have started a school which you can visit at http://berkeleyhifischool.com/ There you can see some of my presentations.

On YouTube go to the Music Reference channel to see how to design and build your own tube linestage. The series has over 200,000 views. You have to hit the video tab to see all.

I am not here to advertise for MR. Soon I will be making and posting more videos on YouTube. I don’t make any money off the videos, I just want to share knowledge and I hope others will share knowledge. Asking a good question is actually a display of your knowledge because you know enough to formulate a decent question.

Starting in January I plan to make these videos and post them on the HiFi school site and hosted on a new YouTube channel belonging to the school.


ramtubes

Showing 1 response by jfuquay

jfuquay
117 posts
 
A good friend has your RM-200, which I’ve heard often. Wonderful sound. Thanks for sharing your experience. Here’s my question: What determines an amp’s “brightness?”
I broke my “hear it before buying” rule when I bought a Musical Fidelity M2si integrated amp (Class A front end/AB power per the maker) because I wanted more power (137 watts at 4 ohms) to drive a pair of Magnepan MMGWs in a living room setup. But while it has great energy and dynamics, the new amp is brighter than the compact Teac HA-01 ICE-powered Class D amp (43 watts at 4 ohms) I had planned to replace. The Teac has a Burr-Brown DAC chip, and I tried a Music Hall 23.5 DAC with a tube buffer and a Musical Fidelity V-90 DAC with the new amp. All too bright for me. And I’m really surprised because I built the Nelson Pass-designed amp camp power amp (Class A) and think it is so natural sounding. I just assumed anything Class A/AB would be warmer than Class D. Apparently not.
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