In this article we investigate how thermal noise and thermal distortion play a part in the design of a phono audio signal chain. For our example, we’ll use a Shure M97XE cartridge, a 47K/200pF termination shunt, three gain stages of 10X … Continue reading →
In Parts 1 and 2 of this series on required sensor power we introduced you to the formulas needed to compute this power, and you got to see the formulas in action in Signal Chain Explorer. At the end of … Continue reading →
In Part 1 of this Short and Sweet article we introduced the concept of finding the minimum required power a sensor needs to deliver in order to achieve a desired signal quality for a given signal chain — that quality being … Continue reading →
New functionality was recently added to Signal Chain Explorer that computes the minimum sensor power required to achieve a desired SNR (or ENOB) for a particular signal chain. This feature was originally experimental, but it didn’t take us long to decide to include … Continue reading →
One of the main figures of merit computed by Signal Chain Explorer is the Effective Number of Bits (ENOB) of your signal chain. In this Short and Sweet article we’ll explain how that number is computed. The ENOB value relates the Signal … Continue reading →
In the last Short and Sweet article we talked about the input and output impedances of inverting and non-inverting op-amp stages. We sort of jumped the gun a little, because we never mentioned exactly what is meant by input and output impedance. In particular, … Continue reading →
One of the unique and powerful features of Signal Chain Explorer is the ability to quickly see the input and output impedances of a stage, both “locally” (stage by itself) and “globally” (backwards or forwards to the beginning or end of … Continue reading →
In Part 1 of this Short and Sweet article we derived the formula for thermal noise as it applies to RC filter circuits: \(\displaystyle {{\eta }_{v}}^{2}={{KT}}/{C}\;\) In this blog post, we’ll try out various RC filters using Signal Chain Explorer and … Continue reading →
My Bonnie lies over the ocean. My KT lies over the C … Okay, with that lame joke out of the way, in Part1 of this (perhaps not so) Short and Sweet two-part article, we’ll derive the well-known \(\displaystyle {{\eta }_{v}}^{2}={{KT}}/{C}\;\) equation, … Continue reading →
In this Short and Sweet blog post we’ll take a quick look at using Signal Chain Explorer to analyze a simple vinyl-to-digital audio signal chain, consisting of a Shure M97XE vinyl cartridge pickup, a twisted pair connection to a parallel RC … Continue reading →