Electronics for Vinyl is the most comprehensive book ever produced on the electronic circuitry needed to extract the best possible signal from grooves in vinyl. What is called the "vinyl revival" is in full swing, and a clear and comprehensive account of the electronics you need is very timely. Vinyl reproduction presents some unique technical challenges; the signal levels from moving-magnet cartridges are low, and those from moving-coil cartridges lower still, so a good deal of high-quality low-noise amplification is required.
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.
Douglas Self studied engineering at Cambridge University, then psychoacoustics at Sussex University. He has spent many years working at the top level of design in both the professional audio and hi-fi industries, and has taken out a number of patents in the field of audio technology. He currently acts as a consultant engineer in the field of audio design.
