Lesson 2 - Posted on 2014-12-19 by Ripley Jene

Today I learned about Basic Electronics. Actually, it felt like a walk down memory lane because my academic background is in Electronics Engineering - so all my days in the lab came flooding back, learning about Ohm's Law and series & parallel circuits. It felt good to be reminded of how current, voltage and resistance still play a part in understanding how signal flow is affected in audio engineering. I had an "A-HA" moment when I learned from my mentor about why analog equipment takes a while to warm up. They use large capacitors to charge up and hold voltage for the equipment because the cycle rate at which electricity is discharged from the AC current is too slow to power the components. It needs more direct current, and so that's why old tube amps take a while to start working - as well as why we can still get a signal even after powering off the equipment, as it needs a bit of time to discharge the current within the capacitors. It's also a good idea to wait a while before touching any of the components inside after it has been unplugged to avoid getting shocked from the electricity still slowly discharging. I'm looking forward to my next lesson with Zack at FREQLAB!