Burson OpAmps - Consensus?


Happy new year gents!

Just curious what folks' experiences are with Burson opamps in vintage or semi-vintage equipment?

Some context, I recently put a pair of v6 Classic Singles in an older SimAudio Celeste 4150se - and it was a great improvement! More life, better bass..

Now I have a pair of NAD 1155 preamps in a stack of mine - both in the same system driving a few amps and I'm eyeing maybe putting duals in both - one in each, v6 Classic. Thing is, they're not cheap.

Anyone else have experiences like this with Burson to share - good/bad/indifferent?

rickysnit

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.