Another interesting new project

[tomp]

You may have heard of Jan Didden. He has been a contributor to audioXpress for some time. He has a new project for a small extremely low noise switch mode power supply for OP Amps and digital circuits. Here is a link.

Tom

http://www.audioxpress.com/article/sile ... ickstarter

[HAL]

On the list.

Waiting on mine to arrive.

[TubeDriver]

I wonder how it would sound on heaters (say a 6SN7)?

[tomp]

Not enough current capability.

[TubeDriver]

It says 1A and 6SN7 only need .6A?

[SoundMods]

I agree with Tom. You have to account for the turn-on surge and plus you don't have much wiggle room for the power supply to run reliably.

[TubeDriver]

Ok, thanks.

[tomp]

I'd be a little cautious of the 1 amp rating. That output is if you push the input voltage up to max and I generally don't like to work in that range. It also is 6 volts out and DC. According to some people you can get migration of the filament material on either tube or light bulb filaments with DC which can shorten life. Not being a tube guy I also don't know what the lower voltage would do to tube performance. I don't know if this board has fold back current limiting but if it does and sees the cold filament current it may shut down. But for OP AMP and digital circuits it looks great.

Tom

[Roscoe Primrose]

According to some people you can get migration of the filament material on either tube or light bulb filaments with DC which can shorten life.

That's much more likely to be an issue with directly heated tubes than on the heaters of indirectly heated tubes like the 6SN7, 12A?7s etc. When I build DHT amps with DC filaments, I reverse the polarity between the left & right tubes so I can periodically swap tubes between channels to mitigate any problems that may be a result of using DC. I don't think it's a real serious issue, especially in small signal tubes. Many of the early tubes were designed to run off batteries for filament supplies....

Roscoe

[TubeDriver]

Yup, what Rosco said. Also, in my setup, my IDH triodes are quiet enough on AC although I could get DEAD silence with DC. AC also sounds better IMHO unless you really take significant steps with DC.

I run a single section of 6S(x)7 so I used to run swapped sides to add usable life to my tubes but then I played around with dissimilar dual triodes and had to revert back to identical hookups in my monoblocks.

DBerning method of running super high fz AC is interesting in that you might get the sonics of AC with the noise WAY out of audible range but I have 2" space limitation for heater PS so that is a no go.