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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”
I. "What is the sound of one transistor clapping?" There are two most essential principles to audio amplifier design. The first is simplicity. The second is linearity. Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." Simplicity is a common element of the best and most subtle designs. It is preferred for purely aesthetic reasons, but also because fewer elements color the sound less, and lose less information. Many audiophiles, including myself, are willing to sacrifice other areas of performance to achieve the intimacy with the sound available through a simple circuit. An amplifier should be… More...
The Penultimate Zen is the sum of several incremental improvements to the original Zen amplifier of 1994. Eight years just flies by, doesn’t it? These improvements are contained in parts 2 through 4 of the Zen Variations, and is likely the last version of this amp, although by no means the end of the variations on the theme of single stage amplification. In part 2 we developed an improved active current source load for the single gain device which is at the heart of the amplifier. Originally designed for the Aleph amplifier series, this current source doubles the output current… More...
The importance of phase response in the audio chain has been brought to greater focus recently by equipment claims of phase coherency, (the output signal has the same phase relationships as the input signal). It is not particularly obvious that two different frequency components of a signal can go into a device at precisely the same time and emerge at different times, but it is extremely common. All audio components distort the phase of the signal to some degree-even air alters the time alignment of a signal, but the biggest offenders are loudspeakers and their crossover networks. Phase shifts in… More...
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