Point to Point vs Circuit Board

Horses for courses

Valve amps tend to have much simpler circuits with very few large components - it can be quite practical to use point-to-point wiring with them.   In terms of solid state components, circuit layout is important and achieving small loop areas can be very beneficial. PCBs allow circuits to be made much smaller than would be possible with point-to-point wiring - which is desirable.  You would not necessarily be gaining improvement with p2p SS wiring and would certainly be adding cost - very likely unnecessarily and with degraded performance.

@three_easy_payments I see. Do you know of any companies doing point to point solid state?

It looks like as a one-off product these guys did an integrated that uses P2P in the amplifier section. Note the minimalist circuit design. Otherwise, no I can’t think of any offhand.

http://www.ptpaudio.com/blok20

Nice find.

Even in the tube camp, not everyone will agree that point-to-point is superior.  You can spend well into six figures for an Audio Note amp, and it utilizes printed circuit boards.  I don't think this was done to cut cost, as nothing else in their designs suggest a cost-cutting mentality.  These amps sound fantastic.

I will be up all night thinking about this one.

You can spend well into six figures for an Audio Note amp, and it utilizes printed circuit boards. I don't think this was done to cut cost, as nothing else in their designs suggest a cost-cutting mentality. These amps sound fantastic.


Even the most expensive equipment uses cost cutting measures.

Totally agree with @larryi and @invalid’s comments. Being hyperfocused on P2P vs PCB is not where I’d be directing the majority of my effort when considering a new component. It’s all about the design and execution, synergy with your other components, and your listening priorities.

Respectfully, with this Question/thread I was hoping to find out whether P2P can be done with solid state, and if so, whether anyone out there is doing it. I am not "hyperfocused" on it, beyond being generally curious enough to pose this question.

Sounds like P2P cannot really be done with solid state, if any of the engineers around here know why I'd be very curious to hear, and as a result no companies are doing it.

The issue is stray capacitance. In solid state amps this is far less of an issue with solid state since the impedances are so much lower. As a consequence there's no advantage to hand wiring a solid state amp other than not spending the time and money to design and fabricate the circuit boards.

looks like P2P and PIA are synonyms. 

It's the size of the pins my friend.

You don't need giant traces for low current signals. More important is how you route them and the capacitance/inductance caused.  Even with these tiny signal paths most designers will use far bigger traces for power and ground traces or even use the entire board as a power or ground.

There's also arguments to be made for the superior behavior of surface mounted devices vs. pinned IC's in terms of capacitance and inductance at the connectors themselves, making them impossible to be point to point.

I know a builder that does something pretty unique.  He primarily builds amps, preamps and linestages, but, he also builds DACs.  All of his builds employ point-to-point wiring (he builds tube gear), but for the DAC, a circuit board is used for the digital/conversion part of the unit.  But, the circuit board is not actually printed, even if it looks to be a printed board on casual inspection.  The board is a sheet of bakelite with a sheet of copper bonded to the bakelite.  The circuit traces are made by CNC machining out of the copper sheet to leave the traces.  

There are benefits to p2p wiring AND circuit boards. The original Phase Linear amps were p2p. In fact, when the 300 series 2 amps were built, many of them had additional wires added to certain points because the pcb traces were too thin (high resistance) to carry the necessary current and that caused failures. Their low cost solution, add some 18awg wire. Circuit boards can be designed to carry the necessary current using thicker copper clad and doubling the traces on multilayer pcb's. Nowadays the best manufactures take everything into consideration to maintain low capacitance, inductance and resistance. That's how the best remain the best.

Manufacturers today take everything into consideration - like who?

Have you opened up one and modified any?

Most components are built to a price point.  There are very few doing P2P wiring because of the cost.  I make a hybrid power amp that is P2P with bi-polar transistors.

So far I have not heard a product that uses a circuit that out performs P2P but hey I am always listening.

Happy Listening.

This is rubbish point to point (and dangerous), (circuit boards would be better)
(very expensive unit and highly regarded by some🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ )
No two would sound the same, and you all know it. https://ibb.co/yPhb5PK

This is proper point to point (better than circuit boards)
https://ibb.co/nwff5zJ
https://ibb.co/fSVdnT2

Cheers George

I think this is not cut and dried. I feel that you can have poor point to point wiring and great circuit boards and vice versa. In point to point, what is the quality of the wire? What kind of solder is used? How well has the soldering been done? In circuit boards, what is the quality of the boards, the design, the composition of the traces? I think an example of a good circuit board amp would be a Raven Audio Avian Series tube amp. Good point to point wiring: PrimaLuna?

In truth as the military has been doing for years thick trace double sided 
2 to 4 ok Copper boards with gold or Silver coatings . Are far more 
accurate then point to point,much better conductors ,far less solder which is BTW only 4-5% silver ,the rest just tin, lead a Quality board it’s far more consistent ,no matter 
what anyone said it is a fact, as long as the circuit boards are quality ,which a good company will use,now there are Ceramic boards with thick Copper traces ,that are what is by far the best ,and lowest in noise currently out there . With a Solid state amp 
far too many parts ,time consuming ,and not as good ,point to point is mainly done in China ,No Thanks .

Call me crazy but I think the SOUND of the component is what's important.

Well, for what it is worth, I built both a Dynaco tube amp (Stereo 70 as I remember) and a Hafler 500 at my desk in my shop in the 1970's.

I followed the directions and soldered a ton of wires in both kits.  Of course, the Hafler had several printed circuit boards as I remember.  (I still use it and it sounds fine.)

I don't remember if the Dynaco had one as well, but probably.  There are some things that are just easier with boards, I guess.

The Dynaco was fine for its day--pretty noisy on Stax Headphones.  The Hafler is a monster to this day.

Cheers!

Fact is most products are a compromise. Some gold platers sound half as good as they should due to designers lack of understanding of / effort at selecting and tuning components for a circuit

The distinctions go much finer than PCB or P2P. FRP, ceramic, bakelite / platings, thickness, routing / solid, stranded, silicone, PVC, teflon, silver, copper / SMT or PTH ad infinitum all have an effect both on cost and sonics. There is never a free lunch.

Like anything, there are biases and prejudices in audio design. Take 10 great sounding amps and 10 highly skilled designers. Rotate the amps through the designers and you will have 100 new amplifiers. Some improved, some not... all of which will depend on the rest of the system used to evaluate the design. Nothing is designed in isolation.

We use hand wiring for our tube power amps. But we use circuit boards for our preamps. This is because in a preamp you have to control stray capacitance much more carefully and consistency is important. Preamps (especially if a phono section is involved) can have a lot of gain and everything has to be right. There's a lot of nuance to circuit board design- making sure traces don't introduce noise where they shouldn't, how pads are designed so they will hold up properly if the board requires service, making sure that parts that get hot can't degrade the board over time and of course controlling stray capacitance. If you design the board properly you simply won't be able to tell the difference between a properly hand wired example vs the same circuit on a circuit board.

This can go both ways; for years we made a kit version of our M-60 amplifier. Some people would do really well with it (you can see its layout in a video on the landing page of our website) and some people don't do so well- I've seen some that look like a rat's nest inside (quite often people who do this ask for more wire....). Its a simple fact that if the hand wired layout isn't clean and well thought out that it will not perform as well; the results can be highly variable.


Of course people like to open up a product and see a hand wired interior that is a work of art. I can safely say that we do that really well. But actually I think the internal appearance of our preamps is actually better than that of our amps.

If you design the board properly you simply won't be able to tell the difference between a properly hand wired example vs the same circuit on a circuit board.

Some may not but some may. Many times we played beat the proto...

Some may not but some may. Many times we played beat the proto...

This is why I was careful to use the word 'properly'.

Atma Sphere makes fine, well designed products. I'm not slagging them off, but 'properly' has nothing to do with it.

There are vast differences between controlled impedances on a circuit board and a hand wired prototype. SS gear can shrink by 50% between prototype and release changing noise radiation and absorption. A PCB has maximum track separation of 1 thickness between sides, contains ground planes and power distribution, all of which can affect the sound. PCB materials can affect the sound. Maintaining PCB tolerances in a handwired prototype is next to impossible. Prototypes types of any ilk are seldom evaluated in the retail packaging. Parts used in the prototype are sometimes superseded / improved necessitating a few steps back or sideways...

Simple circuits of tube amps invite point to point wiring, but for a solid state amp you would have wiring everywhere along with interference caused by all the wiring going everywhere, the routing would become too complex for sure.

@speakermaster thank you. That answers what I was curious about.

Simple circuits of tube amps invite point to point wiring, but for a solid state amp you would have wiring everywhere along with interference caused by all the wiring going everywhere, the routing would become too complex for sure.

Incorrect. A transistor has 3 pins, a tube typically has 6 to 9. A tube amp invites P2P wiring as the mechanics of an exposed tube in a socket on a chassis provide a layout.

SS products could be similarly designed with sockets on a backplane, but costs would be prohibitive. P2P is impractical for many of todays electronics with panel gewgaws and remote control.

PWB, first described in 1903, and transistors became popular about the same time in the 1960’s.

Point to point wiring is absolutely necessary for designers who cannot design a decent circuit board.  I was lucky.  My designer was a NASA rocket scientist who helped with both the moon landing (Apollo 5) and Voyager missions.  His circuit boards did not have "Thin" Crap.  Too many individual wires means too much noise.

Too many individual wires means too much noise.

Utter nonsense.

Bad layout, routing and impedance understanding cause devices to have low SNR, not the interconnect method.

Six of one, half a dozen of the other.  If the circuit board traces are thick there will be less resistance in the trace and therefore will not be energy thermal loss. 
Depending on design either can have capacitive and inductive reactances that can affect sound quality. Design is everything.
In tube amps having independant tube mounts that are bolted to a frame are much better than epoxy mounted soldered tube mounts. Epoxy boards over time get brittle by the high heat tubes radiate. Solder joints can loosen on the board as well. Point to point wiring normally will carry more current and have less loss.
With solid state production costs and assembly labor would be enormous and difficult because usually has many small components. Servicing point to point solid state would also be difficult. Can you imagine the mess of a home theater reciever with point to point?  If well done printed definately best for solid state. 

Blue circle amps were all point to point...
http://www.soundstagenetwork.com/revequip/bluecircle_bc208.htm