"Chronic Philharmonic" wrote in
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"Eeyore" wrote
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tony sayer wrote:

And a scope to see what its getting up to in the MHz
region;!...

Too true. Circuits that may be stable with junk op-amps
may respond differently
when given the chance.

And a certain segment of the techno-snob market will *upgrade* op amps,
create poor stability from good stability, and relish the newfound
"sparkling highs", not knowing the damped sine waves that their *upgraded*
equipment is creating.

Random thoughts... Could it be that the original
designers were aware of the device's limitations, and
took care to stay within those parameters?

Absolutely.

If they used
them in low-gain, low-voltage applications, with minimal
gain downstream, I can see how they could comfortably
stay within the product design specifications. And the
intrinsic stability might have been a bonus.

Very many designers did exactly that.

If your market is *not* full of techno-snobs, then the least technology that
reliably gets the job done will only make you richer and make your life
easier.

I wonder what made them choose that part in the first
place.

At the worst, inverse snobbery.

Could it be cost?

In many cases, the difrerence was pennies. If the volume is extremely high,
then pennies can matter, but very little pro audio equipment is built in
that kind of volume.

Or stability problems that went
away by subbing a part without the need to rev the PCB?

In some cases using techno-snob parts can force you from a single-layer
board to a multi-layer board, and that involves more than just a few
pennies.