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Subject: Re: [motm] Re: Possible strange question about SMT

From: Larry David <ldavid777@...>
Date: 2005-08-18

On Aug 18, 2005, at 11:52 AM, paulhaneberg wrote:

> I have to admit I'm somewhat bewildered by this discussion.
> Most resistors in MOTM modules have a tolerance of 5%. For
> capacitors, the tolerance is 10% or higher. The effect of
> inductance and capacitance generated by the lead wires inside IC
> chips is infinitesimal in comparison to the variations due to
> tolerance.

I was asking more about the physics of the silicon junctions - pn and
np and all that - if they are physically smaller on SMT chips than on
older through-hole ICs or DIPs or whatever they are called. And if
they are smaller - or different in some other way - whether that would
affect how they sound in EM ckts. Whether this would cause better
tolerances and thus less variation, for example. As I think I said in
another post, these effects, if they exist at all, would probably be
more noticeable in custom synth-on-a-chip ICs like on the Andromeda -
and not in an MOTM module that has some SMT ICs on a board full of
discrete Rs and Cs.

> If you make a sound with two VCOs they will both have slightly
> different characteristics. This is part of what makes them sound
> analog. If they sounded the same you would say it sounded Digital.

Exactly. My question was about whether SMT IC components would sound
more "digital" in this sense than discrete components. Intuitively it
seems so, but I was asking the real engineers for the lowdown.

>
> My 2 cents.
>
> Paul Haneberg
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