一个国外论坛上关于设计者ERNO BORBELY的介绍：
Let me give you some background. Erno Borbely lives in Germany, and owns a company which has been selling high end kits since the early nineties, to my knowledge.
This man is a legend in SS audio design. He is also an accomplished businessman, has spent a lot of time in the States, and was for some years the Chief Technical Manager of National Semiconductor in Europe. He is very, very smart.
Borbely has been contributing to audio mags for around twenty years now, and must be well into his mid-sixties. He wrote exhaustively for Audio Amateur, a favorite of mine, and produced some extremely elegant, erudite designs with impeccable specifications. He is particularly interested in preamps and amps; I'm not aware he has done any digital design, DACs for example, but his knowledge and fluency of analog electronics is deeply impressive.
However, knowing now a little about audio design, particularly over the last eight years, I can say that all his designs concentrate on technical elegance, and low measured distortion. This approach is akin to the Mercedes/BMW approach, of course. His approach is strictly engineering; innovative, thorough, and measurement driven. There is a place for this, but in recent years the technology has moved in the direction of art, rather than engineering, and the math & measure approach seems to be fading a little. It is extremely difficult for anyone of this persuasion to build and measure, and labor to get the distortion down, and then to say, as if embarking on a new project, 'How does it sound?', and then, after critical listening, to again roll up his sleeves and begin afresh. I think, in truth, that if anything PSpice has helped this move away from the technology, as designers come to realize that the specs are one thing, but the 'voicing' is quite another....
Borbely was very keen on current sources, current mirrors, cascodes, complex bilateral drives to voltage amps (the so-called 'Lender' topology), complementary feedback pairs ('Sziklai''), lashes of feedback, and heavy lag compensation regimes to guarantee stability, the perennial problem of amplification. Sadly, however, most of his designs sound sharp, clear, and sterile - at least to me. There is these days a derogatory term for this, 'very hifi'!
I personally think Borbely has done a great service to audio. Huge. He is a very clever man (of course, to me, a math dullard, anyone fluent in calculus is a genius!!). He has made huge inroads into the technology, but it is only now in hindsight that we realize that many of these pioneers were chasing rainbows, since the absolute amplitude of the distortion seems not the issue; rather it is the distortion spectrum, and the relative weighting of the artefacts, which are important. If I were to be introduced to Borbely one day, I would make obeisance; he is a towering intellect. However, his kits are pretty expensive, though he has a huge following in Europe and the States.
I can go on for hours about these guys; I know all their histories, and feel that for anyone serious about audio a knowledge of the history and the personalities is vital to advancement. The man I respect above all others is probably Jean Hiraga, the Franco-Japanese audiophile who from Paris in the seventies and eighties almost invented high end. But he was ahead of his time, and sadly never won the recognition he should have. Two others who command absolute respect are Peter Blomley and John Linsley-Hood - both Brits. JL-H is still designing and almost eighty! (Wonder if he rides a Moto Guzzi, Glen? Nah, probably owns a bloody Triumph Speed Triple!). The most contemporary idol of mine is Nelson Pass, who I think is a genuine and inspired artist in a field of obsessive technology. He is unusual in that Pass Labs is the audio equivalent of Open Source Software (Nelson is like Linus Torvalds); all his designs are published and available, and yet all his business ventures have been successful. I have had the privilege of exchanging emails with him and his charm and manners are legendary.
Cheers,
Hugh
