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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”
The Zen Amp concept is an exploration of how well you can make a simple audio amplifier perform. It makes for an interesting illustration of design technique, since more complex circuits are inevitably composed of collections of simple circuits, and it is well recognized that the optimization of these simple sub circuits is usually the key to getting the most out of the larger circuit. Apart from that, there is aesthetic pleasure in rendering a device in a simple way. Also we find that, other things being roughly equal, simple circuits sound better musically. The Zen series has so far… More...
The Burning Amp Festival is an event every October in San Francisco. Do-it-yourself audio enthusiasts from all over gather to show off their projects, listen to talks and equipment demos, and rub shoulders with the rich and famous. Having a very large collection of audio parts and diminishing storage space, I seem to have fallen into the role of Santa Claus there, distributing components and cheap advice, with white hair, beard and a large elf (Colin Pass) to add verisimilitude. This year we also brought a batch of unfinished amplifiers, consisting of a chassis, connectors, transformer, power supply capacitors and… More...
In Part 2 we developed a new active current source for the Zen amplifier. In this part, we create a power supply regulator suitable for the Zen amplifier projects. Previous versions of the Zen amplifiers had no power supply regulation at all, or used capacitor/inductor/capacitor "pi" filters to smooth the ripple on the DC supply lines. In keeping with our philosophy of simple-aspossible, we want to develop a supply regulation system which gives us good regulation, with low AC noise and a stable DC value. The need for a good regulator is obvious enough. As simple as they are, the… More...
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