Electronics for Vinyl

Some of the features of Electronics for Vinyl include:

• integrating phono amplifiers into a complete preamplifier;
• differing phono amplifier technologies; covering active, passive, and semi-passive RIAA equalisation and transconductance RIAA stages;
• the tricky business of getting really accurate RIAA equalisation without spending a fortune on expensive components, such as switched-gain MM/MC RIAA amplifiers that retain great accuracy at all gains, the effects of finite open-loop gain, cartridge-preamplifier interaction, and so on;
• noise and distortion in phono amplifiers, covering BJTs, FETs, and opamps as input devices, hybrid phono amplifiers, noise in balanced MM inputs, noise weighting, and cartridge load synthesis for ultimately low noise;
• archival and non-standard equalisation for 78s etc.;
• building phono amplifiers with discrete transistors;
• subsonic filtering, covering all-pole filters, elliptical filters, and suppression of subsonics by low-frequency crossfeed, including the unique Devinyliser concept;
• ultrasonic and scratch filtering, including a variety of variable-slope scratch filters;
• line output technology, including zero-impedance outputs, on level indication for optimal setup, and on specialised power supplies; and
• description of six practical projects which range from the simple to the highly sophisticated, but all give exceptional performance.

Electronics for Vinyl brings the welcome news that there is simply no need to spend huge sums of money to get performance that is within a hair’s breadth of the best theoretically obtainable. But you do need some specialised knowledge, and here it is.