There is a wide field of tasks left that can only be satisfyingly attacked with the help of old-fashioned analogue technology, and one of the most important are amplifiers for analogue signals. The strongly expanded content of the second edition of "the sound of silence" leads to affordable amplifier design approaches which will end up in lowest-noise solutions not far away from the edge of physical boundaries set by room temperature and given cartridges - thus, fully compatible with very expensive so called "high-end" or "state-of-the-art" offers on today markets - and, from a noise point of view in most cases outperforming them

With easy to follow mathematical treatment it is demonstrated as well that theory is not far away from reality. Measured SNs will be found within 1dB off the calculated ones and deviations from the exact amplifier transfer won't cross the 0.1dB tolerance lines. Additionally, the book presents measurement set-ups and results. Consequently, comparisons with measurement results of test magazine will soon become easier to perform.

This new edition includes a new chapters about reference levels, Noise in Amp Input sections, Humming Problems, and much more."

The 34 chapters of the 2nd edition of How to Gain Gain give a detailed insight into a collection (54) of the most common gain producing, constant current generating possibilities, and electronic noise creation of triodes for audio pre-amplifier purposes. These chapters also offer complete sets of formulae to calculate gain, frequency and phase responses, and signal-to-noise ratios of certain building blocks built-up with this type of vacuum valve (tube). In all cases detailed derivations of the gain formulae are also presented. All what is needed are the data sheet valve characteristic figures of the triode's mutual conductance, the gain factor and the internal plate (anode) resistance. To calculate frequency and phase responses of gain stages the different data sheet based input and output capacitances have to be taken into account too. To calculate transfer functions and signal-to-noise ratios for any kind of triode driven gain stage, including all its bias setting, frequency, phase, and electronic noise influencing components, example Mathcad 11 worksheets as an essential simulation tool for each chapter allow easy follow-up and application of the respective formulae. Free download of all worksheets is guaranteed from the editor's web-site.

The 34 chapters of the 2nd edition of How to Gain Gain give a detailed insight into a collection (54) of the most common gain producing, constant current generating possibilities, and electronic noise creation of triodes for audio pre-amplifier purposes. These chapters also offer complete sets of formulae to calculate gain, frequency and phase responses, and signal-to-noise ratios of certain building blocks built-up with this type of vacuum valve (tube). In all cases detailed derivations of the gain formulae are also presented. All what is needed are the data sheet valve characteristic figures of the triode's mutual conductance, the gain factor and the internal plate (anode) resistance. To calculate frequency and phase responses of gain stages the different data sheet based input and output capacitances have to be taken into account too. To calculate transfer functions and signal-to-noise ratios for any kind of triode driven gain stage, including all its bias setting, frequency, phase, and electronic noise influencing components, example Mathcad 11 worksheets as an essential simulation tool for each chapter allow easy follow-up and application of the respective formulae. Free download of all worksheets is guaranteed from the editor's web-site.

There is a wide field of tasks left that can only be satisfyingly attacked with the help of old-fashioned analogue technology, and one of the most important are amplifiers for analogue signals. The strongly expanded content of the second edition of "the sound of silence" leads to affordable amplifier design approaches which will end up in lowest-noise solutions not far away from the edge of physical boundaries set by room temperature and given cartridges - thus, fully compatible with very expensive so called "high-end" or "state-of-the-art" offers on today markets - and, from a noise point of view in most cases outperforming them! With easy to follow mathematical treatment it is demonstrated as well that theory is not far away from reality. Measured SNs will be found within 1dB off the calculated ones and deviations from the exact amplifier transfer won't cross the +/- 0.1dB tolerance lines. Additionally, the book presents measurement set-ups and results. Consequently, comparisons with measurement results of test magazine will soon become easier to perform. This new edition includes a new chapters about reference levels, Noise in Amp Input sections, Humming Problems, and much more.

This extensively reworked 2nd edition of the book includes ten new chapters. It also features an updated discussion of simulation software tools, covering topics such as simulating complex and / or expensive amplifier structures with the free LTspice software by developing a broad range of additional simulation models, especially those for triodes and transformers. The book adopts the structure used in The Sound of Silence books, with the first part, Basics - Calculations and Simulations, providing deep simulation-triggered insights into the gain and noise mechanisms of differential amplifiers, BJTs, resistors, and triodes. The second part then discusses the RIAA Phono-Amp Engine II, describing all the necessary design, simulation, calculation, construction and measurement processes for this multi-functional MC amplifier. The third part, Knowledge Transfer, presents new ideas on draft designs of the linear low-noise MC input stages (also an extremely low-noise one) and a range of practical measurement tools. Additionally, it includes a chapter on MM amplifiers and their noise production, and offers some surprising solutions. The brand new and extensive chapter on all the simulation models developed and used in the book rounds-out the voyage through the jungle of compromises, allowing best-in-class balanced MC phono-amplifiers to be produced. Lastly, the book also features an extensive index, and free downloads of all Mathcad worksheets are available on Springer's Extra Materials website (extra.springer.com).

The 17 chapters of "How to Gain Gain" give a detailed insight into a collection of the most common gain producing and constant current generating possibilities (28) of triodes for audio pre-amplifier purposes. These chapters also offer complete sets of formulae to calculate gain, frequency and phase responses of certain building blocks built-up with this type of vacuum valve (tube). In all cases detailed derivations of the gain formulae were also presented. All what is needed are the data sheet valve characteristic figures of the triode's mutual conductance, the gain factor and the internal plate (anode) resistance. To calculate frequency and phase responses of gain stages the different data sheet based input and output capacitances have to be taken into account as well. To calculate transfer functions for any kind of triode driven gain stage, including all its bias setting, frequency and phase influencing components, example MathCad worksheets as a second part of each chapter allow easy follow-up and application of the respective formulae. In addition, to demonstrate the differences of feedback and non-feedback relationships, in the last chapter and on MathCad basis, a very extensive and complete calculation example for a three stage linear pre-amplifier as well as a three stage RIAA equalized phono amplifier plays the wind up role of the book.

This book features an extensive index and all Mathcad worksheets. Vinyl is back, tubes/valves are back, on the high-end field SMD-free analog amplification surpasses digitalized chains, and top microphone manufacturers still set on good old op-amps or on fully discrete BJT, FET, and/or tube-driven amplifiers. There is only one problem that is not satisfyingly well solved by the manufacturers: It is the noise production of the active components and the useful reflection in simulation tools, in tables or graphs of the datasheets/data books. Nowadays, mostly surrounded by many digital helping tools, it makes sense using them—also by analog aficionados. It saves cost and time simulating first before spending money. Presented in this book the software tool LTSpice which is the free software solution from Linear Technology (today Analog Devices) that could also be used by full analog lovers to simulate the noise production of their amplifier design. All we need is the right creation approach to develop simulation models for the active components. Inter alia this is already done for tubes and BJTs in the 2nd editions of my “How to Gain Gain” and “Balanced Phono-Amps” books. For op-amps, the missing approaches are presented in the book on hand. It cannot be denied that mathematical software like Mathcad is extremely helpful to find the right equations for graphically presented noise curves which we can find in the literature. Nevertheless, it also works well with other types of math software to fulfill the parameter needs of the here presented modeling approaches for the input referred voltage and current noise of—not only—excellent sounding vintage op-amps, applicable in the audio range from 1 Hz to 100 kHz.

This book presents the design, analysis and testing of fully balanced RIAA phono amps and measurement tools. The content of this book extends a standard reference about RIAA phono amps "the sound of silence" by Burkhard Vogel. Here, the gap is filled between a semi-balanced engine (RIAA Phono-Amp Engine I) and a fully balanced engine, the RIAA Phono-Amp Engine II. In this new book on hand, "fully balanced" means that each phono-amp stage ends up in a balanced - or in other words symmetrical - solution, differentially amplified. Un-balanced / single-ended solutions are not in the scope.

This book presents the design, analysis and testing of fully balanced RIAA phono amps and measurement tools. The content of this book extends a standard reference about RIAA phono amps "the sound of silence" by Burkhard Vogel. Here, the gap is filled between a semi-balanced engine (RIAA Phono-Amp Engine I) and a fully balanced engine, the RIAA Phono-Amp Engine II. In this new book on hand, "fully balanced" means that each phono-amp stage ends up in a balanced - or in other words symmetrical - solution, differentially amplified. Un-balanced / single-ended solutions are not in the scope.