Hall Of Shame

December 7^th, 2010

It was brought to my attention that an acclaimed European Audio "designer" ripped off the HPS 5.1 head amp design, without properly crediting my work (and also apparently without having a clue about how the circuit is really working).

This is not an "idea exchange", but a blatant 1:1 rip off. You would of course recognize here the HPS 5.1 head amp, complete, with cascode, opamp, high speed buffer, servo, lead-lag compensation referred to the positive rail and the PSRR increase/noise cancelling RC cell. The "author" has the nerve to "explain" the difficulties to compensate the loop gain and warns that he won't disclose all details about this design! Afraid of any rip offs, Mr. Designer?

Depending on how things will evolve (in particular if I'll get the smell of dirty money) I am, as usual, considering at least a $1 legal action against the "designer" and his company(es).

Update, it was posted here by the perpetrator (this is a strict copy/paste):

I terminated the project. It is not my intention to hurt anybodys reputation or feelings.I had the impression that i correctly mentioned syn08s many contributions but that was not clear enough i now find. I could argue on and on what the differences to my circuit are but the similarities are too obvious. I made a mistake that i regret. I also made a decission that from now on when i publish a schematic i do not hold back any details about how it it made to work. This is a DIY forum and the readers have a right to see that. I have mixed hobby and profession too much recently and i promiss to sepertae that better from now on. Concerning constant current sources i am prepared to share what i know and i would like to start with the most simple implementation. More to follow untill the dust has hopefully settled.

I would like to stress again that I have no problems in using the information on this web site, as described in the Copyright statement, provided that it is properly credited. Pending any further developments, case is now closed.