Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 270 posts

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#31

Post by compiler-guy »

fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

Much of this is cultural driven by a historical time when we didn't have the tools to measure this stuff, and reproduction was so bad that nearly anything that changed the sound in any way could be argued to be an improvement.

Those days are long gone, but the culture remains.

Getting good sound out of an old victrola--which were very expensive--truly is an art. Getting passable sound out of today's average off-the-shelf electronics doesn't take much at all. But many audiophiles act like are living in the late 1800s.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#33

Post by rubatuga »

If you just want the amp without building it, you can get a TPA3116 Class D amplifier. It is only $21 USD from aliexpress (with free shipping of course!). It accepts a supply voltage of up to 24V meaning that you can just dig around for your old laptop power supply (19V). It comes with a nice and sleek aluminum case, and has low enough noise floor that I can't detect it at all unless my ear is right up against the speaker. Although slightly less power output compared to the chip from the article, it gets loud enough to drown out someone yelling. This amp from aliexpress has gold plated banana plug terminals, RCA inputs, and a smooth volume potentiometer.

Link: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Breeze-Audio-BA100-Class-D-P...

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#34

Post by loser777 »

fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

(EDIT: Parent deleted argument about Vinyl) Vinyl has a few more dimensions than the "quality" aspect. I totally agree that there is no argument for vinyl offering superior quality. However, I have bought a few records simply because they were actually the _easiest_ way for me to buy something I could play back for a few albums/tracks that never saw a proper online release.

It's also easier to display a 12" sleeve as "art" than a CD or a FLAC download ;). Turntables are better decorative living room items than CD players or tape decks, but that's also subjective ;).

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#35

Post by [deleted] »

fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

[deleted]

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#36

Post by willtim »

fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

Your generalisation is unfair. Most Audiophiles just want to listen to music the way the artists intended. This is not easy in a industry where colouring the sound is even celebrated, e.g. 'Beats by Dre'.

I recently tried the latest noise cancelling headphones by Sony (1000XM3). The noise cancelling was excellent, but the bass was +5db overblown, boomy and drowned out most of the mids, the treble was dark to hide the NC hiss. It was unlistenable for jazz and classical without EQ. But the mainstream tech press think they are wonderful, even "WhatHifi" gave them 5 stars. An Audiophile is simply someone that cares about sound quality, most people don't.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#37

Post by madengr »

fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

You don’t align your speakers with the grain of the carpet? Or have little saw horses to rest your speaker wires in? Maybe an iron brick to lay on top your transformer?

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#38

Post by lucianthorr »

fermienrico wrote: post #16

It is refreshing to see these types of articles. Of all disciplines of human interests and hobbies, Audiophiles are one of the most stubborn, misinformed, anecdotal and delusional bunch. Of course I am generalizing, but every time I engage in a discussion about audio quality, it is a losing battle. Not because of lack of data or supporting evidence, but because of the fundamental dissent for data driven arguments. Yo…

There's also the chance that microphones and signal analysis aren't the best metaphors for how ears and brains process sound. But if the audiophiles you're talking about are endoring $8500 mp3 players, maybe we're talking to different people. That does sound silly.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#39

Post by taejo »

irrational wrote: post #26
Matsta wrote: post #10

The majority of all active speakers produced nowadays are Class-D, it's nothing really new (and the fact they are super cheap). No idea how this guy wrote this article and didn't come across DIY Audio (or he just didn't mention it in the article). There is a tonne of information here: https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/

I have some questions. My son has been taking guitar lessons using a classic guitar. Using the advice of his instructor we are getting him a begginer's electric guitar for christmas. We also need to get him an amp. Is the amp in this article the same kind of amp that you could plug an electric guitar into? I know nothing about music or instruments, but I do know about electronics so I was thinking it might be fun to…

> Is the amp in this article the same kind of amp that you could plug an electric guitar into?

I'm no expert, but as far as I understand, this is a power amp, which takes an input at line level (~1 volt) up to a level that can power a speaker. Guitar pickups produce a signal around 100 mV, and typically need a "pre-amp" stage before the power amp to amplify this signal to line level.

Re: Build Your Own Professional-Grade Audio Amp on the Sort-Of Cheap

#40

Post by bitbldr »

irrational wrote: post #26
Matsta wrote: post #10

The majority of all active speakers produced nowadays are Class-D, it's nothing really new (and the fact they are super cheap). No idea how this guy wrote this article and didn't come across DIY Audio (or he just didn't mention it in the article). There is a tonne of information here: https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/

I have some questions. My son has been taking guitar lessons using a classic guitar. Using the advice of his instructor we are getting him a begginer's electric guitar for christmas. We also need to get him an amp. Is the amp in this article the same kind of amp that you could plug an electric guitar into? I know nothing about music or instruments, but I do know about electronics so I was thinking it might be fun to…

While you probably could use an amplifier like this for guitar, you usually wouldn't want to unless it's being used for acoustic guitar or vocals. The reason being, an electric guitar amplifier is going to add a lot of character to the guitar tone that you actually would want, where as an amplifier like this is going to strive for a perfect clean reproduction of the original audio. This is why a lot of guitar players prefer to use old tube-based amps, they add a lot of character to the sound through the preamps and power amps that match what you hear on the recordings of your favorite artists and sound great (though, some argue today solid-state modeling amps sound just as good). With that said, there are a lot of projects and schematics on the web which try to recreate some of the popular guitar amps like the Vox AC30 and Fender Twin Reverb, which would be fun to try and build.

Now if you wanted to make a PA system, I don't see why you couldn't use an amplifier like this with some modifications.

Post reply on HN