[jtwrace]

I'm amazed on how many forums you're on promoting this tweak.  It's simply amazing. 

[Wind Chaser]

Everyone should have it, or at least try it.

[BudP]

Just wait till the web site is up. The trumpeting and thundering from the driven herds of audiophiles will be astounding.

Bud

[Folsom]

I can try the tweak easy enough...

However if I am understanding right what I could also do is connect all the grounds on my amplifiers components to the same same star point. That is instead of using separated paths on the PCB. However I think my PCB's have this already? or there is no way to do any better than I have done?

http://www.audiosector.com/images/lm3875_se_pcb.gif

[satfrat]

Just wait till the web site is up. The trumpeting and thundering from the driven herds of audiophiles will be astounding.

Bud

 
Moooooove over, I'll be there amongst the herd Bud,,, gitalong doggiephile. 
 
Cheers,
Robin

[jtwrace]

Just wait till the web site is up. The trumpeting and thundering from the driven herds of audiophiles will be astounding.

Bud

When will it be up?  URL?

[BudP]

Looks like your PCB's are using the ground buss properly for power, for an instrumentation ground. Assuming that the orange layer is on top of the board and we are looking at the component mounting side. However, I do not see any hint of a ground plane in what I take to be the central signal section.

Bud

[BudP]

When will it be up?  URL?

o-netics.com  This is our audio transformer company. The actual site will have a split personality, right out front for everyone to see. One side O-Netics and the other EnABL.

The EnABL side will have links to licensee sites for diy drivers and finished in cabinet designs for EnABL'd drivers. Also will have pricing for the exotic drivers that I do, Lowthers and such and links to the argument and diy treatment sites.

The Ground Plain, Ground Control, interconnect and speaker cables will also be under this banner. A shopping cart will be included and likely either forum or blog or both.

You guys have just barely been introduced to the snake oil I have for you. Many pretty colors and exotic flavors available, in the rush to increase information retention in our hobby.

The site is planned for mid January at the moment. Still providing art work & pics for a prelim design from Crystal Commerce. I figure if they can deal with the game card industry, and tens of thousands of sku numbers, I should be a piece of cake.

Bud

[jtwrace]

o-netics.com  This is our audio transformer company. The actual site will have a split personality, right out front for everyone to see. One side O-Netics and the other EnABL.

The EnABL side will have links to licensee sites for diy drivers and finished in cabinet designs for EnABL'd drivers. Also will have pricing for the exotic drivers that I do, Lowthers and such and links to the argument and diy treatment sites.

The Ground Plain, Ground Control, interconnect and speaker cables will also be under this banner. A shopping cart will be included and likely either forum or blog or both.

You guys have just barely been introduced to the snake oil I have for you. Many pretty colors and exotic flavors available, in the rush to increase information retention in our hobby.

The site is planned for mid January at the moment. Still providing art work & pics for a prelim design from Crystal Commerce. I figure if they can deal with the game card industry, and tens of thousands of sku numbers, I should be a piece of cake.

Bud

Look forward to reading it.  What are your thoughts on the EnABL test that was done and posted here on A.C.?

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=59575.msg530046#msg530046

[BudP]

I think it was fair and unbiased. Danny is a very bright guy and he did very little wrong on his drivers, unlike some much more famous and wealthy driver makers. The coating he applied to the paper cones, just as with Vifa and Morell, goes a long way to stopping the sorts of in cone and off cone ringing and ghosting that is typical of less thoroughly thought out designs.

At the time I treated these my post included comments to this effect. I have recommended the drivers to quite a large number of folks, especially those interested in diy HT systems just because of the tremendous bang for the buck Danny provides.

I will say that the methods he used to objectively look at the treated driver performance have generally failed to find much indication of a change, either better or worse, in some far more susceptible drivers. Jon Ver Halen's Lowther PM6A blind test, run at the 2008 RMAF being a good case in point. The treated drivers showed worse seeming performance in objective measurements. In blind listening people like Lynn Olson, Alex from RAAL, Michael Mardis and others commented that one set of drivers was startlingly better than the other. Because of the crafty way Jon worked the test, everyone thought that the poor sound came from the EnABL'd drivers and were trying to figure out how to break it to me in a gentle fashion. Caused quite an uproar when Jon pointed out how he had tricked them.

Recently Michael Gerstgrasser, a well known audio investigator in Europe, tested another pair of pretty egregious drivers that I prepared for him. Michael uses wavelet analysis to take a look at speaker performance and the results were startling. The more normal CSD waterfall and impulse tests could find little or no difference. The wavelet analysis was just gorgeous.

Here is a link to a blink comparison of a wavelet analysis of those treated and untreated drivers I was going on about.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/multi-way/119677-enabl-technical-discussion-88.html#post2349700

The rest of the data is in post # 865, 867 & 875, with skeptic analysis at 877 and advocate rebuttal at 879 and many more blink comparisons at 880, not all of which function properly, or are not labeled properly like my favorite wavelet B/D, which is really C/D, the two treated speakers.

The earliest blink comparison, be sure you look carefully at the resonant node shown in the CSD's

http://planet10-hifi.com/johnK-test/

And some resonant movies that will give you an intuitive idea of the weird energy transform coming off of a vibrating surface.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY6z2hLgYuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWadDtIFPNs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bAmjRK9wBA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3csi-2Hrzhg

Have fun wondering what the heck is this really all about.....

Bud

[andyr]

Destroyer of Smiles, you can realize a substantial improvement in the size to the sound-stage, front to back depth layering and freedom from compression if you do not mount your circuit boards any closer than 1.5 inchs away from any portion of the metal chassis. The images of my power amp show one method of minimizing the circuit boards interaction with metal of the chassis. The image of my DIY buffer shows another way of maximizing the space between the circuit board and the top and bottom of the chassis.

 
 
 

This is a good way of maximizing the performance of your amp or preamp if your circuit boards are not designed as described by Bud with an instrumentation type ground plane.
Scotty

Scotty, whilst I can agree with your concept of spacing away from the metal chassis (hence people have reported improvements when they mount their PCBs in wooden cases, rather than metal cases - except that, unfortunately, this offers no shielding against RFI!!  ), I can't help noticing that in your 1st & 2nd pics:

* the PCBs are certainly mounted at right-angles to the back of the case but they are smack up against it - plus, there is zero clearance between the PCB and the top & bottom of the case.  So any improvement you might have noticed could IMO be attributed to a vertical mounting of the PCB (compared to horizontal mounting), rather than spacing away from the metal case!   

* plus, is it spacing the PCB away from the metal which delivers the benefit ... or should all components be spaced away from the case?  In which case you have failed this condition - as you have a number of components on the floor of the case.

Regards,

Andy

[*Scotty*]

I deleted my previous posts as their content, while central to optimizing the performance of amplifier circuitry in general, is peripheral to realizing the best from the GC tweak under discussion.
Scotty

[BudP]

Just in case. To make the blink comparisons actually work, you need to place your pointer right out at the edge of the browser, onto the scroll bar usually. Then just it zip it on and off, between scroll and picture area, to get the comparison to work. Not exactly intuitive, so I thought I should mention.

Bud

[Folsom]

Looks like your PCB's are using the ground buss properly for power, for an instrumentation ground. Assuming that the orange layer is on top of the board and we are looking at the component mounting side. However, I do not see any hint of a ground plane in what I take to be the central signal section.

Bud

How could I add that? In simple - I am not on the same level as you - terms?

I thought the red area was a ground plane on the PCB board? Notice PG- PG+ CHG and OG are connected. SG is connected to OG through the PCB tracing but is not part of the red area that is a copper plane but maybe not ground plane?

[BudP]

These boards are not designed for a poured ground plane. However, the power sections come closest. For full implementation the *g portion of the board would be on the blue side, with all + power provision done with strips wide enough to handle the current, but not large area pads as they are currently laid out. This + portion would remain on the red side.

With the stipulation that components would need to be moved around a bit, a poured ground plane on the signal portions would be on the blue side, interrupted by all pads and the traces already on the blue side.

So, most of what you would see from the component side would be solid copper, broken up by pads and some circuit traces.

Bud

[Folsom]

Interesting... so I would have to cut a new patterned copper plate to put on top of the PCB board basically... I will probably not be doing that unfortunately. Well maybe some day when I want to hand make a "PCB" board.

I mean you could point to point wire except use a ground plane underneath the components correct? One that the leads go through to wires for power or attach soldered into the hole. (Granted you would want to find a way to enhance the contact area like through hole design)

[BudP]

Actually there is a MUCH easier way. Find http://www.expresspcb.com/ download their FREE software and spend a few hours learning the basic rules of PCB design. These are simple rules. You can learn them and implement them correctly. You do not need an electrical engineering degree to produce safe and competent board designs. The boards ExpressPCB will send you from a local board house , after providing a ridiculously low price quote from the software, will astonish you with their quality. You can design on four layers, if you are doing digital boards, or two, with any level of complexity, printed symbols, trace overlay and plated through holes you need.

You can copy the board you showed a picture of and then redo it to suit a poured ground plane. Essentially placing the blue lines on the far side, placing the red lines on the near side and making then a single  or perhaps double ground plane per channel. You will need a way to measure the board spacing you currently have for pads and holes, a $25 digital caliper will work perfectly.

Bud

[Folsom]

I may look into that. Unfortunately my computer may not be able to run their software since I use Ubuntu.

The one thing I can say is that I would not desire any more softness or remove of "fatigue" factor that is there because I am considering replace a bunch of kiwame resistors because it is too easy to tune out or fall asleep. The only reason is my power conditioner seems to remove any sort of displeasure associated with noise. I only seek to improve the sonics.

Two ground planes, like for separate things? For example for power and signal? (as much as they are seperatable) and then connect them via star pattern at another point where earth also connects (say between the two boards).

[jimbop]

All of this talk about ground planes for printed circuits is certainly interesting and informative.

What about a simple monoblock tube amp with point-to-point wiring and a minimal amount of components? Currently I have a single ground buss (12 ga solid copper) running front-to-back across the amp, with one end grounded to the chassis. Both power supply and signal grounds are connected to this buss (about 15 total connections).

Jim D

[BudP]

jimbop,

Quickest way to answer your question is for you to make up a pair of the zip cord loops and tie them onto the ground lugs of your amp outputs. If they make a difference that includes sound stage and ease of listening, then it would be worth either investigating a poured ground plane or waiting a bit for the Ground Plain products.

What you already have has shown to be a very good idea. I cannot say any more than that from personal knowledge, but you are not the only person to take that route.

Smiles,

I am all for that, putting my threat assessment correlator to sleep!. Best rest I get at my age, gentle bliss indeed.

However, missing information does not provide this desirable condition for me and missing color or dynamics fall into that same category. Everything I do is aimed at grain, strain, thin and sharp free, information. That sort of clarity of information, in such large quantities that, just like in a live situation, there is simply too much to take in all at once, without anything "shoving" to get your attention.

Bud