Diode dilemna: Which one?
You know, those little black ones with a silver strip. Come in three sizes - pint, half and full - 1A, 3A and 6A. Apart from lead thickness and diameter, very little to tell them apart.
Or the monolithic bridge rectifier. 4 leads, no PCB required. cost 15x a set of the above 4 diodes.
No schottky (?) or ultrafast types available around this side, unless you drive a Rolls Royce.
Which would be a better choice for audio?
All related threads talk about schottkys compared to a standard bridge, I guess it's only in India that we have to still deal with soldering diodes into a circuit board.
You know, those little black ones with a silver strip. Come in three sizes - pint, half and full - 1A, 3A and 6A. Apart from lead thickness and diameter, very little to tell them apart.
Or the monolithic bridge rectifier. 4 leads, no PCB required. cost 15x a set of the above 4 diodes.
No schottky (?) or ultrafast types available around this side, unless you drive a Rolls Royce.
Which would be a better choice for audio?
All related threads talk about schottkys compared to a standard bridge, I guess it's only in India that we have to still deal with soldering diodes into a circuit board.
Rectifiers
Hi Sangram,
We do get the potted bridge rectifiers 2 amps and above. The larger ones having a metal base that can be bolted down to a heat sink. Even the high speed diodes are available though I am not sure of the part numbers. At least one shop here in Chennai ships parts to other cities. Maybe you should check with parts dealers in Mumbai. There maybe a minimum quantity required for each order. Better if you all get together and order so that the value will be high. Fast diodes are more expensive but still affordable - check Mumbai prices. Elektor or EFY should be helpful.
I use 1000nF 630V across all power supply diodes. These will hopefully cut down the RF hash generated by the diodes. I have not yet tried the faster diodes.
Has anyone on this forum compared standard diodes against the exotic diodes and found a significant improvement in sound ?
Cheers.
Hi Sangram,
We do get the potted bridge rectifiers 2 amps and above. The larger ones having a metal base that can be bolted down to a heat sink. Even the high speed diodes are available though I am not sure of the part numbers. At least one shop here in Chennai ships parts to other cities. Maybe you should check with parts dealers in Mumbai. There maybe a minimum quantity required for each order. Better if you all get together and order so that the value will be high. Fast diodes are more expensive but still affordable - check Mumbai prices. Elektor or EFY should be helpful.
I use 1000nF 630V across all power supply diodes. These will hopefully cut down the RF hash generated by the diodes. I have not yet tried the faster diodes.
Has anyone on this forum compared standard diodes against the exotic diodes and found a significant improvement in sound ?
Cheers.
Re: Rectifiers
Address, please? email? We do get potted rectifiers, but I wanted to know if they are better than hand-soldering 1N4007 onto breadboards.
There's one of me. Everybody else is doing 1N4007 etc. - they can hear the lyrics, so what else matters? Nobody's into high-resolution audio. Schottkys cost a few hundred each.
Bridges are affordable but I doubt any improvements over the regular stuff I am using, apart from convenience and flash. Which was the point of the post.
Had done once, long ago, but not carefully listened for improvements. Will repeat experiment, I am making a dual rectifier amp so it will be easy to compare left and right - one with, one without the snubbers. Isn't 1000nF too large? I thought maybe 100 nF at most, it's RF after all. I would favour even smaller stuff - 10nF may be sufficient.
Yes. Apparently there was significant improvement. There are extensive oscilloscope results, etc. But they were talking about FREDs and HEXFREDs, schottkys etc. Not standard vs exotic discrete diodes, but bridge rectifiers (monolithic) vs. exotics.
🙂
ashok said:
Address, please? email? We do get potted rectifiers, but I wanted to know if they are better than hand-soldering 1N4007 onto breadboards.
There's one of me. Everybody else is doing 1N4007 etc. - they can hear the lyrics, so what else matters? Nobody's into high-resolution audio. Schottkys cost a few hundred each.
Bridges are affordable but I doubt any improvements over the regular stuff I am using, apart from convenience and flash. Which was the point of the post.
Had done once, long ago, but not carefully listened for improvements. Will repeat experiment, I am making a dual rectifier amp so it will be easy to compare left and right - one with, one without the snubbers. Isn't 1000nF too large? I thought maybe 100 nF at most, it's RF after all. I would favour even smaller stuff - 10nF may be sufficient.
Yes. Apparently there was significant improvement. There are extensive oscilloscope results, etc. But they were talking about FREDs and HEXFREDs, schottkys etc. Not standard vs exotic discrete diodes, but bridge rectifiers (monolithic) vs. exotics.
🙂
Re: Rectifiers
I use 100 nF/ 63 V in low voltage applications.
BTW: Rectifiers bridges are NOT monolithic, just four chips inside the can.
There is no need for high voltage diodes. Use caps with voltage rating 50-100% over the actual voltage.ashok said:
I use 100 nF/ 63 V in low voltage applications.
BTW: Rectifiers bridges are NOT monolithic, just four chips inside the can.
Rectifier bypass
Some time ago, when fast and Schottky diodes were becoming fashionable, Pete Goudreau commented on some tests he made using small resistors in series with the small capacitors to filter the diodes, getting similar results (soundwise) to fast rectifiers.
Carlos
peranders said:
Some time ago, when fast and Schottky diodes were becoming fashionable, Pete Goudreau commented on some tests he made using small resistors in series with the small capacitors to filter the diodes, getting similar results (soundwise) to fast rectifiers.
Carlos
Re: Snubbers
Can't remember too well, but the caps were 47n. The resistors were low value ones, probably 100 or 200 ohms, but I'm not sure.
What I do remember is that Goudreau claimed that regular diodes with these snubbers sounded as good a fast ones. And I thought that it might be a good thing to try on regular high amp bridges in power amps, instead of using Hexfreds.
There was an article on the The Audio Amateur on snubbers that also researched this matter.
Carlos
ashok said:
Can't remember too well, but the caps were 47n. The resistors were low value ones, probably 100 or 200 ohms, but I'm not sure.
What I do remember is that Goudreau claimed that regular diodes with these snubbers sounded as good a fast ones. And I thought that it might be a good thing to try on regular high amp bridges in power amps, instead of using Hexfreds.
There was an article on the The Audio Amateur on snubbers that also researched this matter.
Carlos
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