Books

The Audiophile's Project Sourcebook: 80 High-Performance Audio Electronics Projects

Average customer rating:

Meh-
Tubes rule. Slone drools.
Twaddle, stuff, and nonsense
Amplifiers and More
Mid-fi with little explanation

The Audiophile's Project Sourcebook: 80 High-Performance Audio Electronics Projects
G. Randy Slone
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Recording & Sound | Music | Entertainment | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Acoustics & Sound | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

Vocational Guidance | Job Hunting & Careers | Business & Investing | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Business Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Entertainment Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Home & Garden Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Nonfiction Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Reference Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

Look Inside Science Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Amazon Upgrade | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Arts & Photography | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Business & Investing | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Engineering | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Entertainment | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Home & Garden | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Professional & Technical | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Science | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

High-Power Audio Amplifier Construction Manual
Designing, Building, and Testing Your Own Speaker System with Projects
Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook, Fourth Edition
Building Valve Amplifiers
Valve Amplifiers, Third Edition

ASIN: 0071379290

Book Description

THE AUDIOPHILE'S PROJECT SOURCEBOOK

Build audio projects that produce great sound for far less than they cost in the store, with audio hobbyists' favorite writer Randy Slone. In The Audiophile's Project Sourcebook, Slone gives you--

* Clear, illustrated schematics and instructions for high-quality, high-power electronic audio components that you can build at home

* Carefully constructed designs for virtually all standard high-end audio projects, backed by an author who answers his email

* 8 power-amp designs that suit virtually any need

* Instructions for making your own inexpensive testing equipment

* Comprehensible explanations of the electronics at work in the projects you want to construct, spiced with humor and insight into the electronics hobbyist's process

* Complete parts lists

"The Audiophile's Project Sourcebook" is devoid of the hype, superstition, myths, and expensive fanaticism often associated with 'high-end' audio systems. It provides straightforward help in building and understanding top quality audio electronic projects that are based on solid science and produce fantastic sound!

THE PROJECTS YOU WANT, FOR LESS

Balanced input driver/receiver circuits

Signal conditioning techniques

Voltage amplifiers

Preamps for home and stage

Tone controls

Passive and active filters

Parametric filters

Graphic equalizers

Bi-amping and tri-amping filters

Headphone amplifiers

Power amplifiers

Speaker protection systems

Clip detection circuits

Power supplies

Delay circuits

Level indicators

Homemade test equipment

Customer Reviews:

Meh-.......2006-06-15

I've seen better high end audio books. I'm certainly not a member of the aforementioned "Scientific School of Audio System Performance Analysis", the only instruments that can accurately measure sound quality are the ones on either side of your head. I listen to what my ears tell me sounds good, and generally, tubes sound good. Which is why this book is sort of a disappointment, you'd think that out of 80 projects there'd be at least one tube phono preamp, but unfortunately there are no tube amps, just a few rants about how tubes don't produce enough power. Who uses more than a watt anyway? Even the transistor amps presented aren't much better than what you could get from Rex or Circuit City, similar schematics could probably be found on the internet for free. Go ahead and buy it if that's the sort of thing you're into, but if its tubes you want, try Morgan Jones' "Building Valve Amplifiers", it doesn't have many schematics but it covers in great detail the layout and contruction of tube amps. Good schematics can be found on the intarnub.

Tubes rule. Slone drools........2004-12-20

A good deal of this book is an attack on esoteric audio in general and vacuum tube equipment in particular. But just because Mr. Slone hates tubes (and he does, although he can't be honest with himself, like most fundies, and so has to attempt to disguise his real motives) doesn't change reality. Measurements aside, all other things being equal, tube equipment generally sounds better.

If you listen to good music at normal volume, in a normal house, the average power output of your amplifier is almost always between 10 and 500 milliwatts. You can prove this with a DMM that has at least a 20 kHz AC bandwidth and peak and averaging functions hooked across your speaker. The Class B Lin topology solid state amplifier with large amounts of global NFB, which Slone describes and advocates to the exclusion of all others, does very well at between 5 and 100 percent of its rated power, but is terrible at between .01 and 1 to 2 percent of rated power.

There are various circuits to work around the problem, but Slone ignores them. When you refuse to accept the problem, you can't be part of the solution.

There are several possible solutions. One is the venerable transformer coupled vacuum tube amplifier, which for all its technical flaws, does reproduce music beautifully. There are modern tube amps that are universally acknowledged to sound great, have long tube life (in the tens of thousands of hours) and have distortion measurements in the same class as most solid state amplifiers. There are also solid state amplifiers that use innovative circuits and careful device matching-semiconductors are inherently much more variable in device parameters than tubes, which Slone conveniently forgets to tell you-to "give good first watt" while still providing peak power reserves traditionally associated with solid state designs.

I have heard an amplifier built to Slone's schematic on Slone's PCBs-in fact I set it up on my company's distortion analyzer after hours-and it meets his published specs fully. Hooked to my Klipsch LaScalas it has all the sonic elegance of a Peavey CS-400 I happened to have on hand-it makes Blossom Dearie sound suspiciously like Louis Armstrong on her quietest passages, and Angel Romero sounds like Dick Dale is doubling up on his thumb lines in the distance.

Twaddle, stuff, and nonsense.......2004-11-30

Basically this whole book is the effort of a hayseed electronics vendor to peddle his own kits of plain vanilla grade stereo equipment. With skilled electronic assemblers in America getting $8.30/hr (and equally skilled Asians getting that per day!) and components in hobby quantities bringing a 50 to 500 percent premium over what commercial buyers pay even in 100 piece quantities, he claims a hobbyist can better commercial grade designs in his hobby workshop cheaper.

This reminds me of Fred Willard's character in the excellent film, "A Mighty Wind". One of his catchphrases-"I Don't Think So!"-applies here.

These amp designs, apparently mostly from Douglas Self's books, are nothing special or unique: as someone else pointed out, if they were, there would be dozens of amplifiers of "Slone type" sold ,just as many companies made "Williamson style" amplifiers, without compensating DTN Williamson, during the early postwar hi-fi era.

About the only justification for homebrewing audio amps is to get a design offered commercially only as a "high end" piece at huge expense (and gross margin) or not at all. You can get an education, perhaps, but a breadboard project of a couple watts can give you that, and besides, audio amp design isn't exactly in big demand: the websites of High End, pro, and mainstream audio equipment manufacturers list continuing job vacancies for DSP software engineers but never analog designers.

Amplifiers and More.......2004-11-18

I bought this book after my great experience with Slone's High Power Audio Amplifier Construction Manual. This is a fantastic book if you want to build your own amplifier "accessories", such as headphone amps, preamps, equalizers, and other types of signal processing devices. There is an interesting circuit for a phase-linear filter, which I built and works beautifully. It splits the audio signal up between the pre-amp and power amp into low, midrange, and high frequency spectrums. This avoids the phase shifts associated with conventional speaker crossover networks.
You'll need a power amp for each frequency spectrum, but that's no problem. You'll have so much fun building your own amps that you'll have plenty of them laying around. The resulting sound is absolutely fantastic.

Mid-fi with little explanation.......2004-11-17

This is an extension of Slone's earlier book and it is a little better, but not a lot. He reiterates everything he said earlier-ranging from opinion to nonsense-and then as before launches into his pet designs with little good explanation.

If you want to build a Class B semi-serious amplifier for instrument or PA or non-serious-listening use this will probably work, although there are a lot of old 70s and 80s designs readily available at your local library in old electronics and audio magazines.

If understanding the trends in serious audio work today is your goal, start with the "horses mouth" JAES paper "Tubes vs. Transistors: Is There A Difference?". This was hugely important because it was the first published paper in professional reviewed circles that addressed the possibility that traditional metrics such as THD,frequency range, and S/N might not fully address problems in professional audio.

Average customer rating:

In one word - USELESS
Great book with lots of valuable information
Good introduction to Amplifiers, but lacks technical depth.
Good but not deep enough

High Performance Audio Power Amplifiers
Ben Duncan
Manufacturer: Newnes
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Engineering | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Science | Subjects | Books

Acoustics & Sound | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

Applied | Physics | Science | Subjects | Books

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

Look Inside Computer Books | Trip | Specialty Stores | Books

All Amazon Upgrade | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Computers & Internet | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Engineering | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Professional & Technical | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Science | Amazon Upgrade | Stores | Books

Qualifying Textbooks - Spring 2007 | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook, Fourth Edition
High-Power Audio Amplifier Construction Manual
The Audiophile's Project Sourcebook: 80 High-Performance Audio Electronics Projects
Valve and Transistor Audio Amplifiers
Introduction to Loudspeaker Design

ASIN: 0750626291

Book Description

Power amplifiers and their performance lie at the heart of audio engineering and provide some challenging problems for the engineer. Ben Duncan's experience, as an audio consultant, analog electronics designer and author, give him an unique insight into this difficult but rewarding field.

Linking analog electronics, acoustics, heat and music technology; high-end hi-fi and professional PA and recording studio use; theory, modelling and real-world practice; design and repair; the old and the new, the mainstream and the specialised, this comprehensive guide to power amps is a core reference for anyone in the industry, and any interested onlookers.

Ben Duncan is well known to many users of audio power amplifiers around the world, both professional and domestic, through his articles, reviews and research papers on music technology in the UK and US press, and through his part in creating several notable professional power amplifiers. Since 1977, he has been involved in the design of over 70 innovative, high-end audio products used by recording and broadcast studios, on stages, in clubs and by the most critical domestic listeners - as well as creating bespoke equipment for top musicians. Born in London, he has travelled widely but has lived mainly in Lincolnshire, home of his family for over 150 years. He is twice co-author of the book Rock Hardware in which he has chronicled the history of rock'n'roll PA.

Reprinted with corrections September 1997

Comprehensive and colourful real-life guide
Based on wide experience of audio and music technology
Well-known and prolific author in the hi-fi and pro-audio press

Customer Reviews:

In one word - USELESS.......2004-09-25

If you are looking at buying this book because someday you would like to build you own Audio Amplifier, forget it! There is really no information in this book that is useful in terms of that.
Its very NON-TECHNICAL and personally I feel why would anybody write such a book ? What information is attempted at being given to the reader ? Utterly Useless! This one didnt even survive two hours.

Great book with lots of valuable information.......2004-03-13

This is a really good book if you are serious about audio power amplifier construction. It contains a lot of background information that is essential when you want to learn this particular field of wizardry. It does not contain any diy projects but instead gives you some of the fundament that is needed to start creating your own designs. When you have read the book it still remains useful as a reference. I find myself coming back to it time after time, a great book.

Good introduction to Amplifiers, but lacks technical depth........2000-05-03

The book provides a very good introduction to the world of Audio Amplifiers. Quite wordy.

It fails to give a good technical/mathematical explanation of why and how. Nor does it give the grounds/basis from which to design a circuit. For example, what are the right values for a Zobel Network stabilisation circuit on the output of an amp? Rule of thumbs seem to be the go here, often they are not good enough.

If you want to understand, what bias current is best in the input stage's differential long-tail pair, or how to caluclate and make the best choice emitter resistor value for the output stage devices, then this book ain't for you.

Good but not deep enough.......1999-03-31

This book is a good introduction to the world of audio power amplifiers. Unfortunately, you could not design and build an amplifier with the information contained within. It covers a lot of ground, and gives reasons why certain techniques in design are good or bad. A little more low level detail and it would be perfect.

Books:

Books