[sdiy] cap question

[Scott Gravenhorst]

thx1138 <thx1138 at earthlink.net> wrote:
>On 8/9/09 10:04 AM, "Scott Nordlund" <gsn10 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 
>>> It could be that there is no perceptible difference with a single component
>>> change, but if you gradually replace every component in the circuit with a
>>> less noisy/leaky/inductive modern equivalent, it will lose its mojo.
>> 
>> I think that's the general difficulty with this sort of thing, "vintage" sound
>> and whatnot.  Stuff gets designed according to ideal approximations, by
>> necessity.  If a "better", more ideal circuit sounds less interesting, it
>> doesn't mean that a more arbitrarily imperfect circuit will necessarily sound
>> superior, or that it's a credit to the tremendous insight of the original
>> designer (who probably would have preferred higher performance/better specs in
>> the first place).  It seems to me that the most important factor is dumb luck,
>> guided by careful listening.
>> 
>> Of course that undermines a certain appealing mythology of it...
>> 
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>Hi Scott,
>
>Interesting note:
>
>When we built our Dac's back in the early 1970's for Synth design be would
>take 100K 1% and bake them a bit to drive out moisture and then would sort
>them even further using 4 1/2 digit Digital multimeter.
>
>We would also test transistors in a fixture for our noise source for the
>one's that sounded the best.
>
>Matching npn or pnp transistors for building Oscullators, Filters, Vca's
>etc. was practiced all the time.
>
>Much of this are is lost to many who use DSP and integrated circuits. Now
>they are modeling vintage circuits in software.
>
>Where's the fun?

The fun for me is When sound comes out of the speakers driven by my own, albeit digital,
design.  It doesn't matter that it's digital.  Doing the design work takes just as much
knowledge, skill and care regardless of whether it's analog or digital.

>Just a note from an old synth maker.

Not that young myself.

-- ScottG (who has worked with both analog and digital and can declare neither as superior)

________________________________________________________________________
-- Scott Gravenhorst
-- FPGA MIDI Synthesizer Information: home1.gte.net/res0658s/FPGA_synth/
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-- NonFatMan: home1.gte.net/res0658s/electronics/
-- When the going gets tough, the tough use the command line.