1-Aug-2001

The JOB Techniques & Advantages

Why is your JOB Better ?

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The JOB Amplifiers Technology.

The JOB Amplifier circuit is one of the fastest amp circuit in the world with nearly 3 MHz bandwidth !!!!
Why is that speed so necessary?
Because live music and speech are both essentially made of transients. And transients are only sounding accurate when they are rebuilt into the ear with exactly the time coherence they had initially. Only extra-large amplifier bandwidth can rebuild time coherence accurately.
The audible effect ? A real frequency-balanced time response brings Intelligibility which is extremely important for the ear to recognize musical instruments, and understand speech. This is why it is so essential for Computer Games and Home-Theater applications. You have to understand a whispering voice in the middle of a large explosion !
The JOB Amplifier is DC coupled with a new type of DC Servo Control avoiding any DC offset.
DC coupling is the only way to avoid time error in bass. It avoids the usual boominess of the speakers bass response. So you get Tight Bass.
The JOB Amplifier is very powerful for its diminutive size: 200W on 4 Ohms for the Mono amp and 100W on 4 Ohms for the Stereo. This is the perfect power for a small amp : enough power to respect the High Dynamics of real music and speech. The limited-power amps usually found in computer speakers or computer sound cards are not able to reproduce these transients. Neither are the cheap amplifiers used in low-cost Home-Theater equipment. Be careful reading specification. When JOB means power, it's real power, not a marketing argument like it is too often in cheap designs ! You know, Swiss are making understatement one of their key marketing arguments..

Inside the Job Stereo

To achieve these results, JOB uses very high-tech solutions, more often used by space or military industry than by hi-fi manufacturers :

The JOB uses ultrahigh frequency printed board design with matched lines, constant impedance tracks, etc...
SMD technology components are used as much as possible to shorten the signal path and increase the circuit speed.
A minimum number of components are used in the signal path to minimize components coloration, specific distortion and group delay.
Only top quality or even military grade components are used : Minimelf German resistors, ultrafast capacitors including the latest Philips development for filtering capacitors, etc...

If you are not convinced, look at the measurements. Here are some pictures taken of a high frequency signal reproduced by different amplifiers.

The response provided by a highly-rated Audiophile amplifier costing over $10'000 and weighting over 100 lb. !
The tiny, inexpensive JOB response.

You may also see the performance of our recent Job 200 amplifier on graphs we have pulled for you to have a better idea of our technology advance.

The JOB Amplifier has other practical advantages :

A very small size, allowing an easy location anywhere in a room, close to the speaker or on a computer desk.
A built-in level control which avoids the use of a preamplifier in a configuration with a single source, or when the source selection is already taken care of, like with a computer or a TV set.
A very light weight, allowing transport in portable systems.
A very low level of magnetic radiation (use of high quality toroidal transformer) so the amp can be located close to a computer monitor or a TV set.

The JOB Speaker Technology.

The Stereolith patent is 10 years old. The idea is even older.
But very few design revolution in speaker have brought so much in performance, ease of use and, in the same time, reduced so much the cost.

The principle used in designing the JOB Speaker is to build inside a single enclosure the 2 stereo channels. By the specific position of the drivers and the shape of the enclosure, the recombination in space of the two channels creates a natural 360º reproduction pattern extremely similar to the natural space originally existing around the recorded source.

Why is one JOB speaker better than the usual 2 separate speakers ?

It provides Better imaging and depth, even height ! The JOB Speaker is very similar to a head in shape and size. Its space recreation is far more accurate and natural than from a pair of speaker, even if ideally located (which they are not, of course, or you would live elsewhere). The Stereo issued from a JOB Speaker being coming from a single source, it is less distorted by the room acoustics or the listener position. The recreated spatial image does not provide the kind of "left-right" effect (sometimes called ping-pong effect) often demonstrated as stereo but the real size of the recorded musicians, sound effects or speaking persons, the impression of air around them, and the impression there are here in their real shape, width and height.
It is Independent of the listener position in the room. By recreating a real stereo source, the JOB speaker builds a proper imaging without dependency from the listener room location as with 2 separate speakers. With 2 separate speakers, you should stay exactly centered to get a good stereo imaging. Not with a JOB. This is wonderful to listen in family or with friends to a Home-Theater system, perfect for Multimedia where the speakers are never exactly located where they should be for proper space recreation, etc...
Easier to locate in the room. Takes less space, can be easily located where it's convenient, not in the middle of the room like conventional speakers ! And only one speaker is always better than two when space is limited, like on a desktop...
Far less expensive. What costs in speakers is mostly the enclosure. With the JOB design, that cost is already divided by 2 !

The JOB Speaker has other practical advantages :

A very low magnetic radiation, an important parameter for multimedia with high quality screens and for TV applications like Home-Theater, where the best position for the front Job Speaker is usually on top of the TV set.
A very small size, making it very easy to locate in a room (desktop, bedside table, kitchen shelf, etc...).
A very light weight, making it easy to carry when used in portable stereo systems.

The JOB DA Technology.

The "Alize" Technology is issued of the research made by Goldmund for their Mimesis 20 flagship D/A Converter.

Inside the JOB DA96kHz

The principled used are not all in the public domain yet. However, it is known that the single high-density module used in the JOB DA includes 3 revolutionary circuits :

A new type of Digital Interface canceling all Jitter from the signal, based on a quartz locked frequency.
A new type of D/A circuitry, more accurate than any typical single-bit, multi-bit, 16, 18, 20, 22 or 24 bits D/A chip.
A new circuit of analogue filtering, multi-stage, extremely complex and providing the extraordinary time alignment of the unit.

The phenomenal time alignment of the unit is probably its main technical advantage. Providing a unique aliveness and exceptional "Recognition Factor".

The JOB-Sweeter AC line curing Technologies.

The Goldmund AC-Curator and JOB Sweeter unit use a technology we developed quite some time ago to provide low-noise AC line for the sensitive low level Audio products like CD and DVD transports (exceptionally important for Audio quality), D/A and A/D converters and preamplifiers (especially Phono and Microphone preamps, of course).

The main ideas are simple : decouple each unit from the AC line and filter it.
To achieve the decoupling we use isolation transformers. Well known technology that we just pushed one step further by having one separate transformer for each output. Expensive but far more efficient, because one of the most important quality factor being found by our engineers is the total separation between the connected units. In our technology, each Audio (or Video) component is isolated from the AC line noise by one transformer but also isolated from the other components connected by two separate transformers. Much, much better.

After each transformer, the AC line is then filtered before being sent to the connected component. We could use only a parallel capacitive filtering or serial coil filtering, but the capacitive parallel filtering allows a better current linearity so it is preferable for preamps.
More, the filtering being made after the decoupling transformer, the action is strongly reinforced by the coil of the transformer. With a proper calculation, and one separate filter for each output, the efficiency of separation between components is even reinforced, making it absolutely unique in the industry.
The sonic effect of our technology is so impressive that the first unit - the Goldmund AC-Curator - is now considered as the best sounding device of this type in the Audio industry. It is noticed as a cleaning, sweetening effect with (and this is where we are far more efficient than competition) an even increased dynamic range.

Due to the high speed signal cancellation, the technology may not be applied as it is for very fast power amps (like the JOB circuit), because it would slow down the transient capability of the power amps connected. However, the simple parallel filtering used may be applied without the decoupling transformer. This is what we do inside the big Goldmund power amps like the Millennium.

We also just learned that Goldmund will use the JOB Sweeter technology inside the power supply of its new Eidos line of DVD/CD transports, making the unit much better especially for CD reproduction.

Other important JOB Technologies.

Home Networking and Wireless connections

We are sure you heard about it. Most future Audio and Video systems will be installed as local computer networks in tomorrow's customer houses. Because we are conscious it will happen we worked on the subject for long. As a pioneer of the Microsoft UPNP technology we're already experimenting home setup on a simple Ethernet network both hardwired and Wireless.
And we believe so much in the future of wireless that we created in October 2000 a full R&D section to work on this new technology.

You may expect most of it to become operative in the AIHC group products around 2002.
We strongly believe cabling is the worst burden in a domestic Audio/Video System and we strongly believe analogue links are the worst problem in Audio. This is why most of the future JOB and Goldmund products will operate in the digital domain and we are so interested in Wireless technology.