Does Op-amp Rolling Work?

[surroundman]

Good work, Amir. Reviews like this are necessary in order to stop presenting this "op amp rolling"as a feature by the manufacturers.

 

[amirm]

Hi @amirm, in order to help people experience these results rather than just read about them could you make a level matched recording of a music sample using each op amp and share them? With all the competing claims floating around it is hard for people to accept these results just based on reading and looking at graphs.

I could but it is not work that I enjoy doing. Maybe members can sign up to produce as anyone with a capture card is equipped to do so.

 

[Buckeye Amps]

They are not stupid at all. It is just that they don't don't know the underpinning of the technology so go by marketing of companies and lay intuition (that if it is more expensive, it must be better).

I won't name the manufacturer, but for instance a brand that offers Purifi 1ET6525SA amps offers a myriad of OP Amp options. The Sonic Imagery 990 adds $300 to the price of a monoblock build. The Weiss adds $500.

It's a rip off/cash grab.

 

[1st.Virtual.Me]

I could see a market opportunity where discrete op-amp makers could do some purposely design variations to make their op-amps sound different. Lower gain, hidden filters, add some distortion, little heaters, etc ...

Make them in matched pairs.

 

[Mikig]

knowing if a change improves anything. Or worse yet, made things worse.

this is an important point, almost philosophical: very often without logical bases and without knowing what to look for you only risk making changes that make things worse... or that don't improve them at all. I think it's one of the bases that lead people to the disease of continuous upgrade, which very often in reality never is.

 

[RogerSmith]

I never understood what op-amp or tube rolling should deliver. Even if you want to change the frequency reponse of your device, just use EQ.

 

[levimax]

I never understood what op-amp or tube rolling should deliver. Even if you want to change the frequency reponse of your device, just use EQ.

Listening to music can be a magical experience and people want "more magic" in their lives and are told they can get it with better/ different op amps and tubes. The concept of negative feedback eliminating differences between different op amps and tubes is not widely understood.

 

[DonH56]

Nice, again, @amirm. There will always be someone saying the product, speakers, ears, whatever is/are not resolving enough to show the difference. The speakers usually far dominate the distortion anyway.

But surely you know the only way to perform a true audiophile test is to roll the AP into the kitchen and have your wife measure from there.

 

[CedarX]

Good work, Amir. Reviews like this are necessary in order to stop presenting this "op amp rolling"as a feature by the manufacturers.

The feature itself is not the problem—no more than the internal RGB lighting of the A5, or the separate, swappable PSU (light rolling? PSU rolling?).

The problem is when “pundits” claim night and day improvements and manufacturer’s marketing messages just stir that BS pot.

Douk Audio description of the rollable opamp feature is harmless IMO, but what about Fosi’s opamp recommendations by musical genre? …I have to swap opamp each time I listen to a different track ??? How come the recommendations from these same “pundits” always correlate with the price of the opamps? Some of these esoteric opamps rolling cost hundreds—more than the A5 itself…

 

[Mnyb]

They are components ie they have different parameters for reasons you basically need to be able to design the whole circuit and pcb simulate the thing build it and measure it afterwards to be able to make any conclusions .
The performance lays in the execution of the whole circuit not a single component, a badly chosen one can ofcourse break it , but that’s typically not because it’s “bad” but just not a fit for the circuit at hand .

Sure you could make something in some specific design if you know what you are doing.

But this is sold to layman people with lists of different sonic characters for different OP like it where condiments ?

There is also a paradox here , there are two kind of op amp rolling.

* Willy nillly in circuits not thought out for this at you have to solder and you get your “knowledge ” from subjective articles and forums with long list of buzzwords like musicality and prat about every different kind of op you can imagine.
Result is random.

* guided , in that the designer comes with a few safe suggestion that should work in that context.
But then the performance would be very similar to ? And it would have been better if the designer just picked something suitable in the first place .
And the poor laymans migth have read something about the wonders of some magic op not on the list and make this a random exercise, disregarding the manufacturer’s attempts to guide this to known op fit for purpose.
Why risk this a “no user serviceable parts inside” sticker would be better for warranty handling?

 

[beefkabob]

The point is, Douk are selling snake oil on an otherwise fine product. I've never seen an op amp swap improve performance in a measurable and significant way. That would require the original designer to have made a terrible decision on the original opamp.

 

[GWolfman]

Sonic Imagery

Has anyone objectively validated this company is capable of producing anything worth buying (as upgrades)?

 

[tmtomh]

No.
There are huge differences between op-amps, but which parameters are relevant depends on the application— and if or how much this would translate to better output performance.
But there totally can be a "better" op-amp.

This is like saying there are no better DACs because your wife doesn’t hear the difference from the kitchen while you're comparing an "expensive" DAC to an off-the-shelf, mass-engineered DAC.

If there are, or can be, better op-amps, what is better about them, and do any of those parameters apply to the application under discussion here?

 

[wwenze]

so would that then mean, that for given workload, like audio dac, there would be a virtually 'one-size-fits-all' opamp design? and other design exist for the purpose of different workloads, like the one for "video"? that sounds like it make sense

I call this "the gulf between the designers and the internet"

When it comes to home audio, the choices are almost by default NE5532 for bipolar inputs and some burrbrown stuff for FET input (opa2134?). Or at the very least they are present in half of products if not more, not counting the ones already built inside other chips themselves. (And not counting worse ones, I'm not going to use TL072)

It is always theoratically possible to either
a) Push even better performance, or
b) Reduce cost even further while keeping the same practical performance

with (a) and (b) being an interchangeable slider setting. But what makes both better at the same time is better optimization or better design, and that is also always possible.

And here is where the gulf is: The people on internet will keep talking theories and stuff, while the engineer will be like: I've already designed a full product from the ground up and chosen the BOM while building based on that, I know a NE5532 will be reliable there from both technical and marketing standpoint, I'm not spending another month of regression testing.

Design time/cost is still time/cost. This cost can be spent on other places that give better cost/benefit.

 

[wwenze]

Hi @amirm, in order to help people experience these results rather than just read about them could you make a level matched recording of a music sample using each op amp and share them? With all the competing claims floating around it is hard for people to accept these results just based on reading and looking at graphs.

I've seen so many times I can predict the future for you

- Internet asks for recording of differences
- Internet does not hear differences
- Internet blames recording method for removing the differences
- Internet attempts to do simple A minus B substraction which results in huge noise because that method is incorrect
- Some people download Deltawave for the first time and get noise down to -40dB or -60dB
- Experienced people using Deltawave get maybe -80dB or -100dB and tell you there is no difference and any residual noise is due to limitation of method (which is already revolutionary)
- Internet still doesn't believe

Start from the top and stop at any random step depending on how many people decide to entertain the questions.

 

[Thomas Savage]

Op-amp rolling is the new tube rolling but a poor cousin of . Still there's the fun factor for some and if it's a way into playing around with HiFi, leading on maybe to other DIY type things like building speakers or even learning more about ICs then great .

It's common practice for many new enthusiasts and there's a heap of miss information and faulty thinking out there on the subject. Fertile ground for our CFO ! It's particularly good to get the perspective of our ASR forum friend from Buckeye amps , so valuable and bravo for being so honest . That's a guy I'd want to buy stuff from . Its one thing for enthusiasts to swap Op-amps out for fun and another for manufacturers to actively push the practice for profit . I can however understand why they might feel they have to follow the market.

Thanks for this video and written review Amirm , it might as John suggests cause controversy and debate, we are no strangers to that, I will sharpen my pencil in anticipation.

 

[Waxx]

Opamps today, already since the NE5532 came out in 1979, are basicly transparant. I always thought opamp rolling is bulls*** since i was into (diy) hifi a few decades ago. I never heared the change making things better than the standard NE553x series opamps The only reason not to use them in a preamp circuit is to add colouration (deliberate then) i think. More modern opamps are even lower noise often.

I do love some discrete preamps also, but mostly for their colouration (harmonic distortion), not because they are cleaner in sound or technical better. idem with tube preamps. And if you want colouration, opamps are not what you need for that (but maybe in the buffer behnid the discrete transistor or tube stage).

 

[dogmamann]

So you think someone who has built a state of the art power stage, left room on the table on the front-end buffer/gain stage?

I think until we Test it we never know.

 

[Limopard]

One shouldn't under-estimate the placebo effect - especially when the placebo was expensive.

 

[daniboun]

Thanks Amir for this review. This is an old debate that has already been brought to light. For those who are curious, the conclusion of this thread had already been highlighted by Amir with Purifi amps with different op amps that are much more expensive than the Douk Audio.

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