Bill on the 2-SB

Is it expensive to make a truly quiet amp?

No. Low noise is really a question of good design. Most designers employ a brute force approach on the power supply with a bunch of big electrolytic caps which have tolerance problems. You can get a better design, using fewer caps, but including multiple voltage regulators, several RC (resistor capacitor) filters, and capacitance multiplier circuits. The parts for such a power supply do not need to be terribly expensive but the goal must be nice clean DC power supply rails.

Does Zero-Feedback gain circuitry increase costs?

Our noise cancelling differential circuitry doubles the number of transistors and resistors needed - 10 or 20 more devices that cost well under a dollar apiece. You get low noise from design. Some aspects that reduce noise are: use of low noise components, especially the active devices like transistors; noise cancelling circuitry; proper circuit board layout; resistor values as low as feasible. None of this is very costly. Very low noise field effect transistors cost about eighty 90 cents per piece. Thoughtful circuit board layout won’t set cost more than a stupid one.

Are there other elements required for a good phono amp?

A good phono amp will have low distortion, ample headroom, accurate RIAA equalization, minimal crosstalk, and flexibility to accommodate a variety of cartridges and systems. We have an article on our website which discusses each of these in some detail. The bottom line is the same as for noise. Good design supported by repeated listening sessions will get you what you want without having to spend an exorbitant amount of money.

In the aggregate, the parts needed for a good design that will deliver truly excellent sound do add up in cost, so such a device cannot be cheap. However, it needn’t cost an arm and a leg either. We are committed to asking our customers to pay only for what is really needed to create great sound and to keeping that cost as low as possible through careful design.

Do discrete circuits sound better than use op amp circuits?

You can get good results (and some very bad ones) with both approaches. There are some excellent op amp circuits that sound good and measure superbly; we use op amps in the headphone section of our integrated amp. Still, if LKV made a dedicated headphone amp, it would be with zero-feedback, discrete design which gives a little bit more of music's vitality, with lower overall distortion, not just lower THD.

Discrete circuits allow zero-feedback designs.

There are some technical reasons why feedback can be a problem in audio circuits, but I like to think of it this way. Feedback, whether in an op amp or discrete circuitry, requires very high gain which is then reduced with negative feedback. With the high gain comes high distortion, which is also reduced by the feedback. In essence, what you’re doing is making something of poor quality (the high-gain distorted signal) and then repairing it with feedback. The measured results using various test tones are often excellent. But I cannot be convinced that the complex musical signals get through the distort-and-fix process unscathed. And my ears tell me they don’t.

Where the Phono 2-SB shines.

I can go on at great length extolling the 2-SB's virtues, but will just mention one aspect of the sound I find very appealing: its resolution of low level detail. In a good system with low distortion speakers, I hear the overtones, subtle variations, small sounds and texture that make music sound real. It makes the music both very realistic and engaging. Subtle effects in how an instrument is played or a note sung are revealed and I “get” more of what the artist is doing. I find myself drawn into the music. Images of singers and instruments are solid, three dimensional and “present” in my listening room.

Why did you create LKV Research?

First, I believe that we can provide music lovers with great, high-end sound at affordable prices. The key is to focus on the elements of each system component that really make a difference, and combine sound engineering and design principles with careful listening sessions to make each of those elements as strong as possible. I have the discipline to concentrate effort and resources on the important stuff and the skill to make electronics function properly.

For example, the most important aspect of a good phono preamp is low noise. Since a low-output cartridge puts out such a tiny voltage, the phono stage has to amplify it by 1,000 times. However, noise gets amplified too; therefore low noise is the number one concern for a phono amp designer.

Another reason I started LKV Research.

I would like to be able to contribute in at least a small way to restoring manufacturing in the United States. If we don’t start making more salable products here, most of us are going to be working at low paying service jobs. To this end, LKV is manufacturing its products in the U.S. and is sourcing as many of its component parts as feasible from the U.S. That can be tough to do in the electronics business, because most of the available active devices (e.g., transistors) are made in the Far East. Fortunately, some of our transistors are made here, as are almost all the resistors, our custom transformers, our enclosures, and many of our connectors and switches, among other parts. We are always looking for more U.S. suppliers.

What is your background in audio and electronics?

I grew up listening to live classical music played in our living room by my mother and her chamber music aficionado friends. Really well reproduced violin or cello music still transports me back to the spot on the family’s living room rug where I lay to listen. As a teenager, whenever I could scrape up three or four dollars, I went to the local record store to buy an acoustic folk recording. I wore out every one of those records playing them again and again on an old record player that I now think must have had a chisel for a needle.

In electronics, I am basically self taught. I started decades ago, when my parents gave me a Heathkit radio for Christmas when I was 12. I was disappointed because I wanted a basketball. It was several months before my curiosity got the best of me, and I opened up the Heathkit box and built the thing, a transistor portable radio the size of a small lunch box. I connected the battery, turned it on and …. Nothing. It didn’t work. After resisting my first urge to throw it against the wall and watch it smash, I got to work trying to figure out what was wrong. Eventually, I got it working, and so began my education in electronics.

My day job was as a lawyer litigating cases mostly in Federal Court, but much of my spare time for many, many years has been taken up with studying electronics, and designing, building, listening to, testing, modifying and troubleshooting amps, preamps and speakers. I held a ham radio license for a number of years, and in that period I worked on radio gear as well.

Whenever something I built didn’t work the way I expected, I analyzed the device to understand its basic operating principles, read everything I could about it, and put the thing right, sometimes after long periods of frustrating efforts. In the process I got a pretty good education.