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SOLID STATE
The solid state parts of audio circuits have been traditionally misjudged for being the culprits when sonics where not comfortable. The truth is that that they do contribute aurally but they can be detected only when the rest has been put right. We have been listening to a lot of components for many years and we have concluded that diodes in power supplies must be taken care of firstly.
Bad and slow rectifiers can produce much grunge and are microphonic. The International Rectifier HFA HEXFRED series is the best sounding. They come in TO 220 single and TO 247(single or pair) heatsink mountable packages and they are blazing fast and noiseless. The improvement upon normal Schottky barrier diodes is very noticeable. We have chosen a Harris part of equivalent sonic merit that comes in a TO 251 small one diode package that can substitute normal axial diodes in small power supplies. The TO 220 -247single -251 have one diode and the cathode is the left side leg when viewed from front. The TO 247 pair packages include two diodes where the middle leg is the common cathode. The D61 packages are always pair and the middle leg is common cathode.
Many audio circuits use integrated circuit op amps. Especially CD players and converters as well as preamps and active filters. Burr Brown Ics is our long time choice and we recommend them very highly. They sound very musical and airy with lot of impact. We also carry a very low noise LT for riaa applications mostly as long as the best sounding Texas Instruments NE 5532-5534 ICs for those who do not want to change the basic sonic signature of stock equipment but they just need to improve on clarity and dynamics. The Toshiba BC 550-560 transistors improve much when substituting lesser Beta and noisy equivalents. For 3pin voltage regulators we will not recommend fancy alternatives than the original National LM 317-337-338. Since you can use OS-CON decoupling on output, the extra money for special types will not make a difference. Prefer using OS-CONs it does sound better.
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