"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Keith G" wrote in message


But that what this group does - try anything to do with
the enjoyment of 'hifi' per se and the sounds you get
from it and it soon gets ****ed on by a small group of
smartarses* who think they have got the all the answers
'in the numbers' and who start braying 'you can't alter
the laws of physics' or somesuch.

Contrary to your peculiar beliefs Keith, almost everybody these days
manages to enjoy hifi without messing with tubes or vinyl.


DIY 'audio' without 'tubes or vinyl' is very difficult and certainly beyond
the reach of someone like me who has no 'technical background' but was able,
just for a while, to pull it together enough to build two amps (one of them
a kit, the other a pile of components and a circuit diagram), a 3 box valve
phono stage (kit) and six pairs of speakers (piles of board, speaker drive
units and drawings) - three of which are in daily use and have been
complimented to death by visitors to here.


One does one's best and, once in a while, one has a result!! :-)

In article , Keith G
wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Keith G" wrote in message


But that what this group does - try anything to do with the enjoyment
of 'hifi' per se and the sounds you get from it and it soon gets
****ed on by a small group of smartarses* who think they have got the
all the answers 'in the numbers' and who start braying 'you can't
alter the laws of physics' or somesuch.

Contrary to your peculiar beliefs Keith, almost everybody these days
manages to enjoy hifi without messing with tubes or vinyl.


DIY 'audio' without 'tubes or vinyl' is very difficult and certainly
beyond the reach of someone like me who has no 'technical background'

That is demonstrably untrue. Note comments elsewhere on experiments with
loudspeakers, and also the 'HeadDAC' example I produced some time ago as
examples. It is also easy enough to build amplifiers without using 'valves'
and use them to do things like play other sources than 'vinyl'.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

In article ,
Keith G wrote:
DIY 'audio' without 'tubes or vinyl' is very difficult and certainly
beyond the reach of someone like me who has no 'technical background'
but was able, just for a while, to pull it together enough to build two
amps (one of them a kit, the other a pile of components and a circuit
diagram), a 3 box valve phono stage (kit) and six pairs of speakers
(piles of board, speaker drive units and drawings) -

So in what way did this require vinyl? Did you also make the turntable,
arm and cartridge? If not it applies to any source like a CD player etc.

Oh - building valve equipment is actually more difficult than transistor
stuff.

three of which are
in daily use and have been complimented to death by visitors to here.

Interesting. You mention six pairs of speakers. All presumably different.
But 'complimented to death' by your visitors. Which merely shows they're
not picky and or lack experience of such things. It also means you can't
have been much satisfied by any of them if you kept on building different
ones.

--
*No I haven't stolen it , I'm just a **** driver*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Keith G
wrote:



DIY 'audio' without 'tubes or vinyl' is very difficult and certainly
beyond the reach of someone like me who has no 'technical background'

That is demonstrably untrue.


Yes, perhaps I shouldn't speak for others here.



Note comments elsewhere on experiments with
loudspeakers, and also the 'HeadDAC' example I produced some time ago as
examples. It is also easy enough to build amplifiers without using
'valves'
and use them to do things like play other sources than 'vinyl'.


You are surely not suggesting I don't use sources other than vinyl with my
valve amps?

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote

Oh - building valve equipment is actually more difficult than transistor
stuff.


I agree, whilst I've repaired, restored and modified plenty of valve kit
over the years, almost everything I've actually built from scratch in my
50-year career as an electronics hobbyist has used semiconductors. Like
many I started with crystal sets whilst still at primary school, to which I
tried adding a single transistor amplifier stage. Unfortunately since I
didn't understand the damping effect of the low input impedance of the
transistor on the tuned circuit it was a bit of a failure, but it was a
learning experience. Then, having been given a turntable (with arm and
cartridge - an Acos turnover crystal) for my 12th birthday I built a
4-transistor amplifier for it from a design in "Practical Wireless". That
worked a treat, I've still got it somewhere.

David.

In article , Huge
wrote:
On 2011-03-05, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:

Oh - building valve equipment is actually more difficult than
transistor stuff.

Maybe, but the magic smoke doesn't escape from valves as easily as it
does from transistors.

Can't say that has been much of a problem in my experience. But I agree
with your point that the problem isn't 'building' as such, but having some
understanding of what you are doing, and knowing how to test, take care,
etc. However if people are essentially just following fairly simple
standardised designs this shouldn't be difficult for either choice of
device type. I suspect the snag is that people see others building simple
valve designs and don't see simple transistor equivalents.

My own experience is that I did start off playing with valves and crystal
sets. For me a pest with valve designs in power amps was the tendency for
the performance to end up depending on the o/p transformer. So unless you
learned how to wind your own and became able to do a better job than the
'usual suppliers' the results ended up being limited by a factor outside
your control.

Of course you could go down the OTL route. But that never really seemed to
me a route that enthiusiasts with no real understanding of electronics
would find easy - unless again simply copying an existing design in all its
details. It also tends to remove the o/p transformer providing some
protection against trashing the valves (and speakers) when something is
wrong. 8-]

What I do find curious is that despite people eagerly making valve amps,
they seem less interested in making, say, valve FM tuners. Despite the
praise some heap on old designs like the troughline. I wonder to what
extent this is simply because you can buy o/p tranformers for power amps,
but I've not seen any suppliers of suitable IF transformers, etc.

So what people can easily make does, to me, seem conditioned by what
components you can find easily in few-off quantities. I've repeatedly
looked in recent years for someone who will sell a small quantity of 'Toko'
LPF blocks. These used to be easy to get a decade or two ago. But not now,
it seems. Of course you can DIY them. But it requires quite careful
selection of the precise LCR values.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

Oh - building valve equipment is actually more difficult than transistor
stuff.

But building with valves is a lot more fun:-) I've done plenty
of both over the years. And as someone pointed out, valves
are far more forgiving. You can set the bias slowly, and watch
the anodes glow cherry red:-)

PCBs take away one of the most interesting stages -
planning ther physical layout. Vero board looks very
Heath Robinson.

In valve amps, point-to-point can give unexpected results.
Tag boards can still be bought, and good old mil spec
turret boards are still readily available.

Iain

In article , Iain Churches
wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

Oh - building valve equipment is actually more difficult than
transistor stuff.

But building with valves is a lot more fun:-) I've done plenty of both
over the years.

I have also done both.[1] But have much preferred designing and building
'transistor stuff'. Maybe this is because I prefer to develop my own
designs in my own ways. Not feel pushed into doing something based on an
old design and aimed at what I can get o/p transformers for.

Yes, you can learn to wind your own transformers. I have used winding
machines. But I can't say that personally interested me for transformers.
More interesting to use one for winding 10 micron or 5 micron wires to make
THz polarisers. :-)

And as someone pointed out, valves are far more forgiving. You can set
the bias slowly, and watch the anodes glow cherry red:-)

Again, I've never had the problems with transistors that you and others
seem so frightened by. You can also 'wind up the bias' on transistor
designs. Easy enough to test in a controlled way that prevents the risk of
a magic smoke release. You just have to know what you are doing.

PCBs take away one of the most interesting stages - planning ther
physical layout. Vero board looks very Heath Robinson.

Can't say I care about that one way or another. When I've built equipment
it is to use, not to look at. For commercial items I'm happy to leave
styling, etc, to someone else. :-)

However I used to always 'embroider' the circuit onto plain holed board
using tinned copper wire. That meant I just laid out the design as I went
along, based on the circuit diagram I had in mind.

Slainte,

Jim

[1] Should be admitted, though, that after having left secondary school,
most of my work with valves was related to klystrons and carcinotrons and
various odd switching devices. Not for audio. :-)

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"Iain Churches" wrote in message
...

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

Oh - building valve equipment is actually more difficult than transistor
stuff.

But building with valves is a lot more fun:-)

Your opinion, not mine. There's all that metal-bashing needed with valves
that, frankly, I can do without.

I've done plenty
of both over the years. And as someone pointed out, valves
are far more forgiving.

And so much more limiting. You can build a simple analogue amplifier with
valves, but not much more. My most recent audio project has been a device to
pick-off 5.1 or 7.1 LPCM audio from the HDMI output of a Bluray player and
send it as 4 AES/EBU streams to a cinema audio processor. Try doing *that*
with valves!


PCBs take away one of the most interesting stages -
planning ther physical layout.

Err... don't PCBs need their physical layout planned?

Vero board looks very
Heath Robinson.

Very useful for prototyping though.

In valve amps, point-to-point can give unexpected results.

Layout can be critical to getting optimum results with either.

Tag boards can still be bought, and good old mil spec
turret boards are still readily available.


At a price


David.

In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

Oh - building valve equipment is actually more difficult than
transistor stuff.

But building with valves is a lot more fun:-) I've done plenty
of both over the years. And as someone pointed out, valves
are far more forgiving. You can set the bias slowly, and watch
the anodes glow cherry red:-)

PCBs take away one of the most interesting stages -
planning ther physical layout. Vero board looks very
Heath Robinson.

Making your own PCBs is part of the fun. And doing the layout manually -
not computer generated. That you think the only option is vero board says
you've not done much one off construction.

In valve amps, point-to-point can give unexpected results.
Tag boards can still be bought, and good old mil spec
turret boards are still readily available.

Given the better valve makers went over to PCBs for predictable results
why stick with a bird's nest?

--
*Money isn‘t everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.