Why the popularity of germanium transistors in audio, better than silicon?

Hello,
Fellow @elukam according to your definition I am a caveman, your arguments are not devoid of sense, but you are too quick to draw conclusions (favourable to your theory), consider a few cases:
- Something was weak and now it is supposedly better, here I would disagree, current equipment is saturated with electronics, audio tracks are sometimes more complicated than not one simple computer from a few years ago, why? To delight the unsophisticated listener, DSP creates the impossible from the non-existent and you don't really know what you are listening to.
- Equipment used to be weaker - yes - but this was due not to the fact that tubes or Ge transistors were used, but to the technology available in general, all the electronics, transformers, loudspeakers transmitted everything much less faithfully. Therefore, if we were to use, for example, electron tubes nowadays, the situation would be different.
- Old TVs - ok, they had poor resolution, but that's the impact of technology, today's TV is more of a computer with a screen than a TV, the power of the processors is huge and they even add AI, just what for? Processing even 8k doesn't require that much processing power, here we have again the creation of the impossible from the non-existent, the enhancement of images, it's the electronics that know what's supposed to be on the screen and it's not necessarily still the actual image - but it's stunning!
Regards

Col @elukam has captured the essence of this situation quite well. Something that has been forgotten by the general public, due to its flaws or features, is suddenly discovered by someone who looks at it with sentimentality, spreading an aura of "coolness" around it

A good example is cassettes. What do they associate the typical bread-eater with? Not with poor sound quality and inconvenient handling?
Suddenly there are a handful of audiophiles who make a "discovery" about how cool it was and add an ideology that the cassette plays better than the CD, digital roughness, analogue pleasure and other hackneyed slogans. Others pick it up and it goes on.

If the same group of people had mentioned the wonderful sound quality of a cassette 10 years ago, they would have knocked their heads together. And today? Look at how much metal-type tapes go for.

Exactly the same pattern applied to Unitra in our country some 10-15 years ago, which can be seen even in the threads of the electrode.
Years later, you can see a slight reversal of the trend and the dropping of the "eye flaps" Strongly in price, however, went the old computers and analogue cameras.

I'm just waiting for people to start mentioning the superiority of AM radio over FM, what noise and interference is natural to the ear, not like that sterile purity of UKF. Because you know it used to be, right?

In addition, you can hear the storm approaching.

My colleague @James596 would like to add, out of spite, that AM has one advantage over FM; range. I can't listen to the Turks, Chinese or even Germans on FM, but I can on KF.
Of course you can also over the internet, but that's not it .

Beijing still broadcasts in Polish?
In July and August there are super far-field propagations on UKF. More than once I managed to listen to Serbs, Albanians and even Greeks. As far as I remember it was around 96-97 MHz. An analogue tuned radio is best suited for this purpose.

>>21908212
They are broadcasting, around 7 MHz, if I remember correctly. Yet the last time I listened was last summer; and it wasn't very interesting.

James596 wrote:

A good example is cassettes. What do they associate the typical bread eater with?

In my opinion, turntable records are a better example, it's the same symptom. Poor sound versus CD.

CHCl3 wrote:

in spite of the fact that AM has one advantage over FM; range.

Here it is rather not AM-FM that plays a role, because these are just types of modulation. The role is played by the wavelength. Medium waves require a high output power, but their propagation depends on the time of day and does not exceed several hundred kilometres. Short waves require less output power and their propagation is almost unlimited, but depends on many factors - time of day, solar activity, season etc. In these ranges they usually use amplitude modulation (at 2-4 Mhz railway stations use FM... i.e. frequency modulation). On the ultra-low waves they use FM. But there are also exceptions. E.g. AirBand (118-136 MHz) uses AM.

viayner wrote:

- Something was weak and now it is supposedly better, here I disagree, current equipment is saturated with electronics, audio tracks are sometimes more complicated than not one simple computer from a few years ago, why? To delight the unsophisticated listener, DSP creates the impossible from the non-existent and you don't really know what you're listening to.

I wasn't referring to the effects of DSP, only to the mechanisms of faithful recording and playback. As far as they are concerned, after the justifiable end of the era of tubes, germanium transistors and transformers in high frequency paths, we have reached a level in popular equipment that exceeds human perceptual abilities. In other words, it is no longer necessary or worthwhile to do better.
Everything is more complicated because it costs practically nothing to increase quality with additional electronic components. So there is nothing wrong with that. It is not, as some audiophiles imagine, that a simple circuit is a good circuit. It is exactly the opposite.
And when it comes to DSP, why not. Since the signal is transmitted digitally between modules and the source is digital too, there is no reason not to process it with DSP instead of complex, unreliable, uneven crackling and humming analogue circuits. The sound in a room strongly depends on the speakers, their positioning. A small change in geometry has the same effect as changing some parameter in the DSP settings. So why not.

Quote:

- Equipment used to be weaker - yes - but this was due not to the use of Ge tubes or transistors, but to the technology available in general, all the electronics, transformers, loudspeakers carried everything much less faithfully. Therefore, if today we would use, for example, electron tubes, the situation would be different.

This was due to the fact of using tubes and Ge transformers or transistors. And today nothing would help them if more modern germanium tubes or transistors were produced.

Quote:

- Old TVs - ok, they had poor resolution, but that's the impact of technology, today's TV is more of a computer with a screen than a TV, the power of processors is huge and they even add AI, just for what? Processing even 8k doesn't require that much processing power, here we have again the creation of the impossible from the non-existent, the enhancement of images, it's the electronics that knows what's supposed to be on the screen and it's not necessarily still the actual image - but it delights!

This is a completely different topic. But the video signal today practically only exists in digital form. There is no option to return to the technology based on and consequent to the construction of the widicon. When solid-state CCD sensors were developed and when they reached a resolution inadequately high in relation to existing television technology in a b. short time, that was the moment to behead it with a guillotine.

This is an interesting observation with CCDs and their resolution. In CCTV, cameras started to reach more lines than PAL accepted, e.g. 700TVL. This pushed the development of DVRs with analogue inputs into AHD and HD-SDI/TVI/CVI. Inexpensive high-resolution FHD cameras operating on similar installation principles as PAL cameras offered the possibility of easy installation upgrades.

But CCD resolution was increasing and the adaptation of 4MPx and 8MPx and 16MPx cameras in CCTV enabled the move to IP cameras and packet streaming instead of analogue signals in a dedicated path. This also changed the approach to installation design as switches could aggregate streams from multiple cameras in a single link and the medium could be changed from copper to fibre or even wireless or even from LAN to cameras reached over the internet.

This is the result of the development of many parallel technologies, video streams are sent over the Internet, which used to be accessed via 56Kbps modems, a camera consuming 5W compresses video using the H.265 codec, PCs used to use MPEG2 acceleration cards because the CPU was too weak, copper ethernet on a twisted-pair cable and RJ45 plug (8P8C) accelerated from 10Mbit/s to 100 and later 1000 and even 2500 and 10Gb/s, and a 1GB/s switch costs PLN 60.

>>21908347
Of course it is the wavelength.
I used AM as a mental shortcut. In civilian radio, AM is used on lower frequency and longer range wavelengths, and FM, as it is known on UKF, with coverage, most often, local.

Hello,
i've come up with a few more suggestions, sentimentality about the 'freebies' in question:
1) Note that the glory days of lamps or Ge elements were associated with the youth of quite a few users of this forum, these were times of fond and good memories, so we may have a desire to return to something associated with these good memories. It is often the case that "what a shell soaks in..."
2) Simplicity of layouts, I personally feel that complication makes no sense or need. In the past, a lot of circuits could be made on a single transistor or tube, compare the old radio receivers containing only a few tubes and still providing very good reception (I am not considering the resonant circuits and their selectivity), nowadays such a radio is dozens of transistors enclosed in a few integrated circuits, and with the old resonant circuits not providing special quality or selectivity.
3) Coming back to the audio track, the simpler the track, the less we add extra "colours", acutely I appreciate it.
Regards.

Hi,

viayner wrote:

(...) these were times of fond and good memories, so we may have a desire to return to something associated with those good memories(...)

Here the consensus

viayner wrote:

Simplicity of the layouts, I personally feel that complication makes no sense or need (...)

Well, unfortunately, it is simply impossible to agree with this statement. Lack of selectivity means, especially in an environment with the presence of interference, lack of sensitivity and lack of resistance to intermodulation. Resonant circuits are expensive to manufacture (because actuation) and not robust to shocks - if you can replace them with something, it's only better. Tubes are expensive, large and unreliable - unlike integrated circuits.

viayner wrote:

Returning to the audio track, the simpler the track, the less extra 'colour' is added, an ac I appreciate.

You are very much mistaken a short feedback loop, involving, for example, only one component, is the cause of additional distortion appearing, not a way not to add it.

If I had to encapsulate this in one bracket, I would write that the old circuits may have been understandable, simple to reproduce and required little 'technology' (just right for an amateur), but that doesn't mean they were better - quite the opposite. Complication of electronic circuits is not done 'because it is': because everything is becoming more complicated and harder to service, so audio or radio must be like that too. The exact opposite is true - usually the reasons are very rational and strictly engineering, for example: avoiding time-consuming operations in the manufacturing process, minimising distortion, improving selectivity, improving resistance to cross-modulation, low current consumption, miniaturisation, resistance to harsh environmental conditions and many factors.

I, too, recall with fondness my beginnings as an electronics engineer, when it was possible to make a shortwave receiver based on the BF966 and LM386 - but it works differently and better now. And that the design of an analogue receiver in modern technology requires more knowledge, e.g. knowing the basics of DSP, FPGA coding, Altium/Kicad etc. - well, that's hard, you may need more knowledge, but it's easily accessible (because of the Internet and lots of open projects) and easier to learn (you can tailor it to yourself, because ChatGPT will explain everything).

Apart from that, decent engineering was also complicated in earlier times, e.g. in the 70s, 80s - only consumer engineering in the People's Republic of Poland was simple and easy to understand - just compare Unitra, for example, with Kenwood from those days.

Greetings,
Fimek