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Nelson Pass has been an early contributor to the audio DIY scene; It has been said that Nelson has a knack of explaining engineering things very clearly in a few words, and that he obviously enjoys doing it. He is also a very active contributor at www.diyaudio.com. Being very generous with advice, tips, and complete amplifier designs that people can build.
What does Nelson Pass get out of this interaction?
“I like to speak to the teenager (me) who wanted to know this stuff—that's my audience. There are always people who appreciate a decent explanation that gets to the meat and potatoes. I see it all as light entertainment with a little education thrown in. The academic paper approach has its place, but it seems intended for people who mostly understand the stuff already. If you want to communicate with DIYers, you depend more on colorful analogies, a little hand waving, and very little differential calculus. I get lots of personal satisfaction out of the whole enterprise. It gives me an outlet for some cool ideas and things that otherwise would stay bottled up, and I have an excuse to explore offbeat approaches purely for their entertainment value. Also, the process of communicating DIY stuff is a two way street—I would say I get about as much as I give. Nelson Pass”
Conventional wisdom holds that a pure voltage source amplifier is ideal for audio applications, and generally designers of loudspeakers work to that assumption. This belief has particularly been dominant since the development of high power solid-state amplifiers that began in the 1960’s. A small minority of audiophiles thinks otherwise, and these are often people using low wattage tube amplifiers with unusual looking speakers. Well, of course entertainment is full of fringe elements. A couple of years ago, Kent English and I were playing around with various ribbon tweeters, noting how the ribbons themselves seemed perfectly happy being driven by a… More...
I must say that I have been very gratified by the response to the Zen amplifier from the last issue of TM. Since writing the article I have had an opportunity?to build another 25 copies of the amplifier, listen to it on a larger variety of loudspeakers, absorb criticism from the readership, and generally meditate on the project. Areas of criticism of the design all relate to the objective, measurable performance, but in addressing them, I found that the subjective performance improved with the measurements. All of the changes are performed without altering the original topology of the project amplifier.… More...
The Zen Amp concept is an exploration of how well you can make a simple audio amplifier perform. It makes for an interesting illustration of design technique, since more complex circuits are inevitably composed of collections of simple circuits, and it is well recognized that the optimization of these simple sub circuits is usually the key to getting the most out of the larger circuit. Apart from that, there is aesthetic pleasure in rendering a device in a simple way. Also we find that, other things being roughly equal, simple circuits sound better musically. The Zen series has so far… More...
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