"Haudegen": MM-Phono-EQ

Do you have something like the picture in mind as a test setup?

There are other DIY-style structures in my photo album.
Mounted on a wooden board it's the most fun - I used the kitchen extensively, until my first analog oscilloscope complained about the frying fat.

And now for the riddle: which commercially very successful equalizer is in the picture?
I guess breadboard style for a first shot with a 1m distant power supply should do the trick.
My mind ain't clear enough (or it's the image resolution) to guess the product 😅
It does look like a phono but hard to say which silver or black box is stripped and copied on the cutting board.
The all-time price/quality winner would be the NAD PP2 but it looks too complicated for this lil box
 
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Dear Chestnutspread,

You can indulge in a little mathematical fun and in addition search for "Walter G. Jung (67th Convention 1980/10/31 ... AES).

The ohmic resistance ratio must be 12.4081 ... and that of the capacitances 2.91 ...the products (time constants) are 2.937ms, 1.00837ms, 236.7µs, 81.267µs ...
And then there is also the almost 100-page paper by Mr. Lipshitz.

Douglas Self has a perennial favorite at the start, but I think Morgan Jones' "Valve Amplifers" is better choice for DIYs.

I'll have to consult Haudegen later, if he's still alive.
 
@Chestnutspread

R8 = 10kOhm
R7 = 820Ohm

C456 = 300nF
C3 = 100nF

----------------------------------
R8 / R7 = 12,195
C456 / C3 = 3

R8 * C456 = 3ms
R8 * C3 = 1ms

R7 * C456 = 246µs
R7 * C3 = 82µs

-----------------------------------

I think you can live very well with these deviations.
Simply select the capacitors to +/- 1% and use metal film E96 1/4W resistors with +/-1% tolerance. And you no longer have to worry about the RIAA curve.

Nevertheless, just set up the transfer function of this divider, then we can all check theoretically, without simulation, whether the official time constants (75µs, 318µ31, 3.1831ms) or the attenuation curve (it is a divider) is adhered to.

That would make me very happy. Thinking for yourself - that's great :).

HBt.

(Break,
now I'm enjoying the incredible Maria Callas)
 
Dear reader,
I will not be online for the next few days and must ask for your patience. At most, I will quickly deliver the symmetrical voltage regulator I mentioned earlier as a circuit diagram.

Tomorrow I will pick up Haudegen from the convalescent home for fallen warriors. His psychotherapist has allowed him a week's vacation.

I won't give too much away, but Haudegen has a lot of scars. The CEO almost destroyed him in the end. At the last second, our hero managed to free himself from the devil's maw. As an honest skin, he couldn't imagine what weapons the devil had at his disposal, all alone in the fight for justice and friendship.

His systemic counselor from the local psychological counseling center told him what a great guy he was and not to think about retirement now.

But the many poisons in Haudegen's life story are still having an effect, and he still hasn't found a suitable antidote. Poison is the most perfidious weapon, the devil's tool of the trade - here in the form of Alois Lederhose.

But he showed him anyway and found allies.
Haudegen prefers the "long sword", open and honest. He's actually a knight, let's see if I can help him?


HBt.


Psst.
A layout, a PCB could already be created during my vacation. Brave ones step forward, don't be afraid.

I have to take care of Haudegen, he is my best friend. That's why I probably won't find time for a layout, someone else is welcome to do that ... (in Haudegen's Lab, all the little wannabes will now lower their eyes, just the /as usual) ;)
 
"Das Netzteil, ein Regler"

You can really go wild with the power supply unit, usually it doesn't do any harm - but it doesn't help either.
That's why we reach boldly into the component box and discover the ancient LM741.

Have fun with it.
HBt.



Psst

Unfortunately, our hero doesn't want me to reveal much more of his memoirs for the time being. But we can already guess what happened to the project. Of course, the Emperor couldn't take a stab at his "Ritterkreuzträger" friends, they let him go cold ... because they knew that a blue LED was no innovation at all and good equalizers could be bought on every corner, bad ones too.
And so the evidence room filled up, but an emperor never gives up ;).

Sadly!
The budding and obsessive love affair between Haudegen's "Kumpel" and the young lady had disastrous consequences. That's the way it is in a laboratory.
 

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Dear diary,
It was bitterly cold tonight.

We are now on the highway, on the direct route to Capri. The radius is getting shorter and an invisible force is pulling us towards our destination. The old Fiat 500 always seems to want to turn right, inwards. The lane is probably blocked. The roads are also somehow desolate, it literally pulls us to the right and to the left, back and forth.

The turbocharger is howling by now. Will that work? The shock absorbers are no longer the best either and so we bounce over the black asphalt. If we end up in a ditch, it's the fault of Haudegen's therapist, she really wanted us to travel in style. I would have preferred the massive minibus and booked a hotel with all the comforts, the all-round happy service - but that's part of the therapy, she said.

After the first third, it became quieter, the car somehow ran better now, we had probably gotten used to the screeching of the engine, then it went gently uphill and the Fiat decelerated more and more, finally the sound of the engine flattered us. Haudegen fell asleep contentedly in the passenger seat.

Suddenly the Italian accelerated, building up to a crescendo. I could already hear Mario Lanza singing in my head,

When we finally reached our destination late at night, we could just see the glowing red sun sinking into the sea.

Fishing boats on the horizon!



Here is a photo of the rattletrap.

@stv,
Yes, indeed! It seems to me the (positive) regulator op-amp inputs have been mixed up!
That's right, thank you for your advice. Obviously, OP1 must also be in nfb-mode. I mirrored the symbol in a hurry. Please connect pin 3 to the reference potential 0V.
:(
 

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@Chestnutspread

Capri 14°C no rain
If you choose the hard (complex) away and set the numerator to 1, then the denominator should look like a small catastrophe:

R1/R2 + C2/C1 + 1/(1+omega^2*T3^2) +j[ 1/(1+omega*T3) + omega*T1 - 1/(omega*T2) - 1/(omega*T3) ]

With
T1=R1*C2 -> 1 msec
T2=R2*C1 -> 246 µsec
T3=R2*C2 -> 82 µsec

Please check for correctness, I've just scratched it quickly into the rocks - the meddlers are already looking at us suspiciously. Careless mistakes can therefore not be ruled out. And they are already very easy to make here.

F(jOmega) = 1/ denominator.

Try it with Laplace, that works more reliably. I have suggested R1=10kOhm, R2=820Ohm, C2=100nF, C1=300nF. It should fit with the normalized RIAA response curve. You can also solder the divider to a breadboard and measure the amplitude response. I think, matlab will solve this for us.

In a substitute source consideration, R1 is parallel to the cross branch.



Bye,
HBt.
( Now i'm in vacation, singing with the capri fishers)
 
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The story continues, and turns into a drama

We can already imagine that our CEO in question is constantly opening up new construction sites and driving his entire workforce to despair.
Now he wants a strict separation between left and right ear, well, there's a solution: not just "Hefeweizen" and red wine, but a good bottle of rum or a club. Next he'll probably want four huge batteries and big plugs (thinks Haudegen) - and that's what happened.

The fun is long gone for everyone. Haudegen's fellow sufferer can no longer stand being so close to King Louis, so he leaves his comfortable office and moves downstairs to the control engineering lab. Two friends who understand each other without words, side by side each other.

We can already imagine what kind of theater took place during the daily visits to the laboratory and the metal workshop. King Louis didn't understand at all that four huge batteries couldn't fit into his preferred housing concept. The visits reached their climax.

We can already imagine what kind of theater took place during the daily visits to the laboratory and the metal workshop. King Louis didn't understand at all that four huge batteries couldn't fit into his preferred housing concept. The visits reached their climax.

Even the very demanding control project had to be ordered to a low level so that God (now some employees called the CEO that) could at least have a finger in the pie.
From then on, Haudegen's friend smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and drank vast quantities of beer, met up with colleagues - and the young lady became increasingly pushy.

Ancient demons formed in Hudegen's head and from then on he called CEO Alois "Papi".

Apart from that, he could have had a small kind of battery, a kind of simulation. These were already available in products from the Far East, but that didn't matter. The deal with the original customer had long since fallen through.


HBt.
(With permission to tell from Haudegen's memoirs.)
 

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"Ich will es aber wissen, es war so abgemacht, vom Feuerschein träum ich die ganze Nacht ... verrate mir doch das Geheimnis' wie man Feuer macht,
es war so abgemacht..."


Our sad heroes now sang to themselves every day, but it didn't help. Enough of the story: the daily life of an employee in the world of Rotary (for now).



#
For the current EQ project, I'll add another power supply option, namely the apparent battery. Personally, I would prefer a completely normal story with an LM317, 337 and perhaps a filter, the capacitance multiplier.

As for the power supply, you can realize it according to your own taste. +/-12Vdc.
 
PSU 2:
We simulate one battery per channel, i.e. we look into a huge cookbook ... Double mono PSU for our EQ. The most important detail is on board, the lighting system, two LEDs.

I look ahead,
maybe there is a cook there, wants to prepare the dish.
;)
 

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Forks in the road

At this point of a development idea, a variety of branches now occur. Alois Lederhose will not allow any possibilities to pass him by and will naturally follow every impulse. It is clear in black and white that he wants to play in the big sandbox of the big boys - and so he will immediately pass on every suggestion from his buddies to his troupe, completely without reflection.


At this point in the excursion, however, we'd better ask ourselves some profound questions.
1) one compact PCB, stereo with one NE5532 and one TL072, mono PSU on PCB for both channels.

or
2) four PCBs, one NE5534 and one TL071, double mono construction, one separate and large, extraordinary PSU per channel.

or
3) two boards per channel, each with an eye-catching PSU. Then we no longer really need the second stage with the Class A seal of approval and can opt for a single NE5532 per channel, took out the extra bipolars. We know that this OP was the pride of past generations.

Unfortunately, three inevitably leads to four.
4) because we now suddenly lack the nimbus of the special and we seriously question the concept of the two-stage structure with a passive divider.

five follows

5) we seriously consider active equalization, a network in the negative feedback of a single operational amplifier. So many interesting design questions pop into our heads.

For example:
real low noise, open loop gain, bandwidth, specifications of the components, suitable measurement conditions to check our goal, real life check with turntable (average in houses), smallest deviations of the finished product from the final prototype, which optional settings are really useful on the final product and which can be permanently integrated ..! In the search for low noise in connection with the pickup system, three fundamental questions arise for the input stage (of the OP or a separate differential amplifier in combination with an NE5534, for example).

But let's stick with the current design, I hope for now.
 
I can only make the attempt palatable to the reader. It's up to you to build it yourself, so feel free to reach into the component box - all the components are in well-sorted boxes. A direct comparison with ... is worthwhile. But first a test assembly, a provisional solution, which is known to last the longest.

Let's do it, just for fun.

:)
 
Pictures say more than words

This is what a final prototype could look like, this has been my favorite equalizer for several years. A discrete preamp amplifies and adapts my MC system to the following active EQ with SSM2134. My last two original PMIs. Realized with standard components, the special focus in this development was on completely low noise and exact compliance with the RIAA reproduction standards.
 

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Dimensioning of a power supply unit

If our EQ requires a balanced supply of 15V dc and only draws 60mA dc current, then we can do a very simple rollover.

U * C = I * t

t=10ms
I=(60mA plus reserve), we define the reserve with up=sqrt(2)*2Vrms=2.83Vp and a maximum load of illusory Rl=33Ohm (headphones?): 60mA+86mA=146mA. Let's give the 7815 fixed voltage regulator another 5mA and generously set I to 150mA.

In the equation, the U stands for the ripple at the charging capacitor directly behind our rectifier bridge. With a bit of luck, our voltage regulator will reduce this sawtooth-shaped voltage down to 1/10000. For an SNR of -70dB and a 2Vrms signal, our voltage before the regulator should theoretically be superimposed with 6Vrms.

Let's calculate a first C = (0.15A * 10ms) / 6V = 250µF. And without the 7815 it would be almost 3F. A voltage regulator is absolutely necessary. If we simply turn the tables once, we can estimate the ripple with a given charging capacity: u = (0.15A *10ms) / 1000µF = 1.5V ... rms or pp is not decisive for the ripple.

We therefore set the C to 1mF. I guarantee that we will never measure 1.5V.


The solution: 15V our rails + 3V regulator difference + 1.5V ripple + 1,4V diffusion voltage of our rectifier = 21V. Divided by root 2 equals at least our secondary voltage of the mains transformer = 15Vac.

P or rather S = U * I, 15V * 0,15A = 2.25 W or also know as VA. Two windings, times two -> ending up 5W or even 5VA-Type should work for one channel.

For the current Pearl project, I'm guessing an oversized 30VA toroidal core.

Assuming that our 7815 perhaps only reduces the ripple by a factor of 1000 -> u_ripple is now 1.5mV and our two OPs do the same for us, then in the very worst case we would now be at 1.5µV. 20*log(2V/1,5µV)=122,5dB.

Isn't that crazy? 1mF and a 5VA transformer, that's all you need.
In my EXakt_MK2 the charging capacity is 2*1000µF in PI configuration, with one LM317 for both channels together.

With 4m7F you are completely carefree. And an encapsulated 30VA toroid is heaven.
I can't say whether everything is right (here), because Haudegen is already fast asleep - with the good air today ;).



Our Haudegen-Project is content with +/-12Vdc and doesn't want to drive headphones either.

HBt.
 
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Tomorrow, Haudegen and I will dive for pearls (at least three), they should be as beautiful as Aphrodite - abnoe, of course.

@Chestnutspread

Do you like the approach? Maybe I can convince Haudegen that Gerber files need to be published. According to the principle: open your mouth and spoon in! The latest PISA study has shown that schoolchildren in Germany are getting dumber and dumber, which breaks the old man's heart, I don't think he'll let that happen.

Bye,
HBt.