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The LM383 Story

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Re: The LM383 Story

#11

Post by neya »

aidos wrote: post #8

OT but it seems like a good place to ask: this week I’ve been looking into making a wireless speaker similar to a Sonos play:1. In terms of the streaming mechanism is was going to use a raspberry pi running as a snapclient, wired to a class-d amp board and a, say, 3” driver. I thought I would find a load of projects using a pi + amp + driver in a small box combination, but I must be looking in the wrong place. Does a…

I have built my own wireless bookshelf speakers using a combination of GE5654 Tubes, TPA3116D2 [0][1] and customized woofers and tweeters (Rosewood finish) [2]. I have to say, it really came out much better than I expected. [3]

Here's how I did it:

Last year, I visited Taiwan and China, I basically went to scout for speaker suppliers. I shortlisted a couple, but I realized, the popular they are, the pricier they are - regardless of the quality. Then, I realized something shocking. Actually, most speaker manufacturing is done in Nanjing (and one more location starting in N, forgot). These factories just stick the brand names on top and license it to these "big brands". And you pay a premium for that. So, I visited one direct supplier in Nanjing. It was a very small shop. I just walked in, placed an order for a pair. The whole set of 4 speakers (2 woofers and 2 mid-ranges) costed me in total of $200 US roughly. I purchased two 6.5" aluminium cone woofers and 2 golden capped full ranges. I like woofers with large Xmax, so I bought these for bass units.

You can purchase from AliExpress too, although it's slightly pricier. But most speakers from China, contrary to popular belief, are very very high quality. In fact, the consumer audio space such as Sony, Samsung, etc. use much lower grades than what's normally found on AliExpress.

As for amplifier, buy a half-decent board. Strip out all the cheap components, spend 3x the price of the board on really good quality components. For the TPA3116D2 board, this place is a good start [4]

Hope this helps. Cheers.

[0] https://www.instagram.com/p/BplhIIqHNhl/

[1] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpl71mUHLbm/

[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bm02F4OgAwX/

[3] https://www.instagram.com/p/Bppl-dsHWuW/

[4] http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/diyaudio-com-wiki/252663-tpa3...

Re: The LM383 Story

#12

Post by setquk »

ianhowson wrote: post #10

As a kid, the LM383 had particular appeal: it was the highest-power amp chip available that ran off a 'safe' voltage. I didn't need to do any mains wiring.

I was forever trying to find enough old car batteries to get more volts when I was a kid for precisely this reason.

That was until I nearly burned the shed down charging one up. I was confined to alkalines then. Boo hiss.

Re: The LM383 Story

#13

Post by jradd »

aidos wrote: post #8

OT but it seems like a good place to ask: this week I’ve been looking into making a wireless speaker similar to a Sonos play:1. In terms of the streaming mechanism is was going to use a raspberry pi running as a snapclient, wired to a class-d amp board and a, say, 3” driver. I thought I would find a load of projects using a pi + amp + driver in a small box combination, but I must be looking in the wrong place. Does a…

I've had a lot of luck (good and bad) with the ESP8266 wifi module for little applications similar. I'm interested in trying something like ESP8266Audio[0]

[0]: https://github.com/earlephilhower/ESP8266Audio

Re: The LM383 Story

#14

Post by pwaivers »

> "But it is humorous when the TDA2002 is often referred to as a replacement for the LM383. As a matter of fact, the LM383 is really a reverse engineering of the TDA2002. Credit should be given to the design engineer Bruno Murari who was working for SGS at the time. He was the one who came up with a way to do an automotive power amplifier using only five pins."

This first paragraph is almost gibberish to me. In a good way. I just find it humorous that there are so many in-the-know words here.

Re: The LM383 Story

#15

Post by wpietri »

When I read things like this it amazes me that computers work at all. As person who spends 99% of the time working on software, I so much take all of the EE level for granted.

Re: The LM383 Story

#17

Post by anyfoo »

pwaivers wrote: post #14

> "But it is humorous when the TDA2002 is often referred to as a replacement for the LM383. As a matter of fact, the LM383 is really a reverse engineering of the TDA2002. Credit should be given to the design engineer Bruno Murari who was working for SGS at the time. He was the one who came up with a way to do an automotive power amplifier using only five pins." This first paragraph is almost gibberish to me. In a goo…

Please don't be proud of ignorance.

TDA200 and LM383 are obviously product or device names. Bruno Murari is obviously a person's name (a design engineer, as the sentence points out!), SGS is obviously a place where one works, likely a company.

You should have no issues with the term "reverse engineering" if you are on Hacker News. So that only leaves "automotive power amplifier using only five pins". You probably know what "automotive" and "five pins" means, though, so even less than that.

And then it's absolutely obvious that you won't know what a "power amplifier" is if you don't have some connection to electrical engineering, but it's useless to point that out. Imagine if every electrical engineer did that on articles on biology, chemistry or economic sciences.

Re: The LM383 Story

#18

Post by dfox »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #5

"Either 45Watts to one or 90watts to both appears to pop the plastic off the silicon with out any apparent damage to the chip" Oooh, found my project for the weekend! "Now it is no longer possible to do this since the packaging department had redesigned the package" aww shucks

The package redesign remark is only directly relevant to NatSemi TO220-5 parts. There are various other TO220 packaged ICs (and discrete devices) made by other manufacturers which have exactly the described failure behavior.

Re: The LM383 Story

#19

Post by steve19 »

neya wrote: post #11
aidos wrote: post #8

OT but it seems like a good place to ask: this week I’ve been looking into making a wireless speaker similar to a Sonos play:1. In terms of the streaming mechanism is was going to use a raspberry pi running as a snapclient, wired to a class-d amp board and a, say, 3” driver. I thought I would find a load of projects using a pi + amp + driver in a small box combination, but I must be looking in the wrong place. Does a…

I have built my own wireless bookshelf speakers using a combination of GE5654 Tubes, TPA3116D2 [0][1] and customized woofers and tweeters (Rosewood finish) [2]. I have to say, it really came out much better than I expected. [3] Here's how I did it: Last year, I visited Taiwan and China, I basically went to scout for speaker suppliers. I shortlisted a couple, but I realized, the popular they are, the pricier they are…

Can you share some links to aliexpress speakers that have the same internals as yours?

Re: The LM383 Story

#20

Post by neya »

steve19 wrote: post #19
neya wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have built my own wireless bookshelf speakers using a combination of GE5654 Tubes, TPA3116D2 [0][1] and customized woofers and tweeters (Rosewood finish) [2]. I have to say, it really came out much better than I expected. [3] Here's how I did it: Last year, I visited Taiwan and China, I basically went to scout for speaker suppliers. I shortlisted a couple, but I realized, the popular they are, the pricier they are…

Can you share some links to aliexpress speakers that have the same internals as yours?

I was able to find the full range I used, looks pretty close. Probably the same: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/NEW-MODEL-Audio-Labs-Top-end...

I am not able to find the woofers, probably need more deeper digging.

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