While I've been sharing a lot of my work on muffsy.com, I've never really clarified how my view is on people using my work (or derivates of it). This is now changing.

I've decided to release all of my content (barring a few exceptions) under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

What does it mean?

It means that everything on muffsy.com, except where specifically stated, is open source. You have the right to:

If you're going to use any of the content on muffsy.com, you will have to adhere to these conditions:

• Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
  
• No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
• You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation.
  
• No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material.
  

There are also some conditions for muffsy.com to follow. Most notably is that the shared information must be in an open format. The only possible violation to this are my Autodesk Eagle design files. They can be used, but not always processed, by the free version of Autodesk Eagle. They can also be opened and edited (although not always perfectly) in the open source tool KiCad.

What are the exceptions?

The only exceptions to the Creative Commons on muffsy.com is for a few of my PCB designs, mainly variants of those that I'm currently selling. They are free for personal or non-commercial use, but you cannot use them commercially without my approval.

The fact that the schematics are open source will of course allow you to design your own PCBs for any desired use, as long as you comply with the terms of the license.

At the time of writing these are the only exceptions:

• https://www.muffsy.com/blogs/post/Make-Your-Own-Muffsy-PCBs
  
• https://www.muffsy.com/blogs/post/Make-Your-Own-Muffsy-Power-Supply
  

If not stated otherwise, everything is free to use as described above. That's right, text, pictures, schematics, design files. The lot!

I'd really like a stereo input selector with relays, but those things are hard to find! (Apart from some of dubious quality on the *Bay)

Better make my own then. This one's got a custom footprint for an ESP32 devkit module, but it can also be controlled with a rotary switch.

I decided to use five Panasonic TQ-2 relays. The ESP32 module and relays are powered separately, power ground and signal ground are separated to avoid injecting any clicks, pops or noise into the audio channels.

The whole project is open source, free to use as you wish. Eagle project files, gerbers, the Eagle library for the ESP32 module and BoM are all available on the hackaday.io project page.

And, wouldn't you know, Hackaday presented this little side project on their blog!

Check out this post for test setup and limitations.

ITU-R IMD is one way to measure intermodulation distortion. I am feeding the circuit with two test tones at -6 dBV, which will sum to 0 dBV. The test tones at 19 kHz and 20 kHz will produce a modulated signal at 1 kHz. The difference between the test tone and the modulated signal is the ITU-R IMD.

The ITU-R IMD for Burson V6 Classic is -118.1 dB / 0.000124%.

Click here for a high resolution image of the measurement.

How does it fare in comparison to the audio analyzer itself and, equally interesting, our OPA2134 reference IC op amp?

Well, the audio analyzer can measure down to -122.2 dB / 0.000078%, so the Burson measurements are well within the analyzer's capabilities.

Click here for a high resolution image of the measurement.

The Burson V6 Classic loses out to the OPA2134 once again. The OPA2134 measures -121.0 dB / 0.000089%.

Click here for a high resolution image of the measurement.

Following up on the THD measurement of the Burson V6 Classic (which also shows the test setup and limitations), here's its frequency response.

These measurements are showing up now because the QA401 is not linear. The measurements had to be compensated for that.

The frequency response is measured with an output of 0 dBV / 1V rms and a gain of 1.36 dB / 1.17X.

The Burson V6 Classic's gain is 0.1 dB lower than expected. It performs great otherwise, showing -0.2/-0.1 dB all the way from 10 Hz to 80 kHz. This is as high as I can go with 192 kHz sampling frequency. The graph uses a relative scale since it would otherwise disappear under the 0 dB horizontal line.

Click here for a high resolution image of the measurements.

But how high does it go? Time to whip out the Rigol DG1022 function generator and the Rigol DS1054Z oscilloscope. ~1.5 MHz is the answer (with the noise starting at about -20 dB below the signal). Go beyond that and the amplification still holds for a while, but the signal is no longer a sinus.

The signal is down -3 dB at approx. 3.7 MHz. By then it's a pure saw tooth signal.

Background

To see if the Burson V6 operational amplifiers are viable in the Muffsy Phono Preamp, I went ahead and bought the dual version of both the V6 Classic and V6 Vivid (*). They don't come cheap, about 20x the price of an OPA2134. Getting two of these instead of 40 OPAs for my kit stock was quite a difficult decision...

The op amps from Burson were delivered with cable ties. I have not been able to figure out why... ;)

I have both feet firmly planted in the objective side of things, so I decided to get the Burson's to do some measurements. I did listen to them in the gain stage of my headphone amp, comparing them with both NJM2068 and LM4562. They sounded pretty damn good (as in more or less indistinguishable from the others) in that scenario (both 2.5 and 6.5X gain), so I really don't feel fooled or anything. This seems to be a proper product.

JFET inputs are best suited for moving magnet cartridges. The Bursons do have JFET inputs. I would like my op amps to be able to run on +/-15 volts. The Bursons handle up to +/- 16.5 volts. The basics are covered, let's see what they're capable of.

(*) Yes, I did buy them myself. They were not given to me by Burson.

Preparations

In my quest to measure the Burson V6 discrete operational amplifiers, I've established the measurement baseline and used the OPA2134 as reference.

I'll start with the Burson V6 Classic, and I'll have to visit the Burson V6 Vivid later. The V6 Vivid that I received appears to be defective. Burson kindly agreed to send me a new one.

I have shown that I can measure THD down to -118.7 dB / 0.00012%, Here's how the Burson V6 Classic fares.

The op amp is placed in a test rig with 1.36 dB gain. There is no filtering circuitry in the test rig. The output signal is -10.33 dBV, which is the level at which my audio analyzer performs the best.

NOTE: I have reduced the input impedance from 33k to 511 ohms, and updated the measurements. A man's gotta do something with those Tesla TR161 precision resistors...

The plastic around the Bursons gets comfortably warm (not hot, but they would be perfect for warming my hands now that it's winter), and they need a minute or so to warm up before the measurements stabilize. This is taken into account when performing the measurement below.

THD Measurements

Click here for a high resolution image of the measurement.

As it turns out, the V6 Classic is within the measurement limits of my QA401 with about 1.5 dB to spare. The THD shows up at -117.1 dB / 0.00014 %. The noise below 1 kHz shows up in this graph as well, showing that the Burson doesn't have the same noise rejection as the OPA2134.

While the OPA2134 performed beyond the abilities of the audio analyzer, the Burson didn't. This shows that the V6 Classic can't compete with the OPA2134 when it comes to THD at low gain. Still, this is pretty respectable.

Based on the THD alone, they should be virtually indistinguishable from most "normal" op amps in the gain stage of a DAC, headphone amp, CD player and similar line level equipment. I won't be testing their output capabilities, but they're probably not suited for output directly to a headphone (and neither are more than 99% of the IC op amps).