About Pass DIY

Nelson Pass has been an early contributor to the audio DIY scene; It has been said that Nelson has a knack of explaining engineering things very clearly in a few words, and that he obviously enjoys doing it. He is also a very active contributor at www.diyaudio.com. Being very generous with advice, tips, and complete amplifier designs that people can build.

What does Nelson Pass get out of this interaction?

“I like to speak to the teenager (me) who wanted to know this stuff—that's my audience. There are always people who appreciate a decent explanation that gets to the meat and potatoes. I see it all as light entertainment with a little education thrown in. The academic paper approach has its place, but it seems intended for people who mostly understand the stuff already. If you want to communicate with DIYers, you depend more on colorful analogies, a little hand waving, and very little  differential calculus. I get lots of personal satisfaction out of the whole enterprise. It gives me an outlet for some cool ideas and things that otherwise would stay bottled up, and I have an excuse to explore offbeat approaches purely for their entertainment value. Also, the process of communicating DIY stuff is a two way street—I would say I get about as much as I give. Nelson Pass”

A75 Part 1 — Norman Thagard & Nelson Pass / 1992

READERS' REQUESTS FOR more power are reasonable, but not interesting enough to justify another article. Hanging some output transistors on the original and beefing up the power supply is best left as an exercise to the reader. While the A75 delivers more power, particularly into low-impedance loads, that is not the primary goal of this project. We wish to introduce more advanced concepts in amplifier design, including balanced inputs, dual differential inputs, true DC response, cascode and folded cascode operation, tiered and regulated supplies, operation with and without feedback, and details of designing with the new generation of power MOSFETS.… More...

Zen Amplifier Revisited — Nelson Pass / 1994

I must say that I have been very gratified by the response to the Zen amplifier from the last issue of TM. Since writing the article I have had an opportunity?to build another 25 copies of the amplifier, listen to it on a larger variety of loudspeakers, absorb criticism from the readership, and generally meditate on the project. Areas of criticism of the design all relate to the objective, measurable performance, but in addressing them, I found that the subjective performance improved with the measurements. All of the changes are performed without altering the original topology of the project amplifier.… More...

Zen Variations 9 — Nelson Pass / 2006

In ZV8 we dipped our toes into the waters of power JFET transistors using the new Lovoltech LU1014D in a simple circuit. The focus of the project was on the JFET itself, and except for a cascode transistor the rest of the amplifier used only passive components. Here in four installments we will increase the complexity of the circuitry around the JFET with an eye toward distortion performance surpassing any of the Zen projects to date. Much of this project will make reference to ZV8 (AudioXpress, January 2006 and www.passdiy.com), which discusses the characteristics of the LU1014D power JFET and… More...

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