6 ms·

A bit of a premium? I'd say their prices are an insult to their customers. It's not even new chips where you'd expect this as they need to recoup NRE. Oh no, th

by rathel 6y ago

A bit of a premium? I'd say their prices are an insult to their customers. It's not even new chips where you'd expect this as they need to recoup NRE. Oh no, they price gouge on designs that are decades old. Avoid them at all cost.

cpach 6y ago
Are there good and cheap alternatives? (Asking out of curiosity, I know almost nothing about this kind of hardware.)
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Chip costs are pretty low, all else considered. Yeah, AD is more expensive but I spend way less time reading documentation. If you're a hobbyist like me, you don't really care about spending $5 on a chip instead of $2 on a chip... especially when you're paying multiples of that for the PCB and other parts of the equation.
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    Part of the fun of hobby building is you can design your stuff any way you want. Maybe nobody will mass-produce an audio preamp with $20 opamps inside, but you can DIY one if you feel like it. I built a digital audio interface with an ADI ultra-low-noise clock generator. It was a $20 part. That's a ridiculous price but it's also only $20.
    - formerly_proven 6y ago
      Also especially for audio stuff it's not like all op amps have to be high spec. At the edge (input/output) components matter much more than inside the circuit, where levels and impedances can be designed in. A low-noise BiFET op amp makes a ton of sense for pre-amp, but as a generic buffer or whatever amplifier between stages, not so much. Even in 2020 a NE5532 is a fine choice in those places.
      - dragontamer 6y ago
        In general, you can always substitute a high-quality, expensive op-amp for a cheap op-amp. From the perspective of a hobbyist with limited space: you want to minimize the SKUs that you stock in your personal shelves. Buying a higher-end op-amp and spamming it everywhere (even when its specs aren't needed) is far simpler than buying 10x different op-amps at the $0.50, $1, $1.50, $2, $3, $4, and $5 price points. Just keep a supply of higher-quality $5 rail-to-rail low-bias op-amps at the voltage-level (3.3V for most Arduino projects). Yeah, there's probably a $0.50 op-amp that does the job. But do you really want to keep another SKU on your shelf and keep track of it? There's simplicity in just buying over-specced parts for personal hobby projects. -------- Well... maybe keep a stock of the $0.50 stuff too (EDIT: Ah right, LMV358. That's the cheap part I keep around). But I think you get my gist. Personal-supply closet management is certainly a problem for the personal hobbyist.
        segfaultbuserr 6y ago
        > In general, you can always substitute a high-quality, expensive op-amp for a cheap op-amp. Yes, it will work in general. Unless the expensive opamp has a significantly wider bandwidth, then one must use with caution. Switching from a low bandwidth opamp to a high bandwidth opamp is especially problematic, the loop characteristics are different and it may need additional frequency compensation or bandwidth limiting, the original layout may become inadequate, etc. More often than not, a blind replacement make it oscillate like crazy. Sometimes having a bunch of cheap opamps makes life easier. And financially - your heart and wallet won't start bleeding when your $0.5 opamp is unexpectedly zapped by ESD, cooked in soldering, or fried in an overload. Killing a $10 ASIC is a big deal (just did that last week while prototyping an ASIC controller, but there isn't anything cheaper on the market).
    - boojums 6y ago
      Do you have any information on your digial audio interface you can share? Seems like an interesting project.
      - jeffbee 6y ago
        Not that exciting really. I built an instrument that could measure very small levels of harmonic distortion induced by converter phase noise. Then, being so equipped, I made a converter with immeasurable phase noise. The instrumentation was the exciting part, in all honesty. $1000 off-the-shelf pro converters now exceed its performance.
        boojums 6y ago
        I feel like "Not that exciting really" is underselling it given that your hobby project is matching current $1000 pro equipment, but that could just be my own ignorance with the subject matter.
        jeffbee 6y ago
        It's nice of you to say so. That's the nature of DIY. A hobbyist has some aesthetic or objective performance goals, but they have no economic goals, so the range of things that hobbyists build greatly exceeds the range of commercially available equipment.
  - joezydeco 6y ago
    I'm working on a pretty expensive piece of measurement equipment and the $12 AD7193 I'm using seems expensive until you see how crazy accurate this thing is. It's worth every penny.
  - flywheel 6y ago
    Hobbyists don't make up even a tiny sliver of their revenue. And if you're a hobbyist and paying any money at all for Analog Devices (or other semiconductor manufacturer's parts) then you're kinda doing it wrong - most of them have free samples: https://www.analog.com/en/support/customer-service-resources/sales/sample-products.html https://www.analog.com/en/support/customer-service-resources...
dragontamer 6y ago
AD's opamps are like $5 instead of $2. Since my home electronics projects are one-off things... the 250% increase for better documentation and better LTSpice models is well worth the $3 cost increase.
syedkarim 6y ago
Yes, they are expensive, but their products are generally of really high performance. In some cases, there are no actual competitors. Just take a look at the AD936x-class of RF ICs. What is the alternative to a part like that? ADI's documentation--relative to many chip makers--is outstanding. They have EVBs for almost all of their parts, open source hardware designs as well as firmware--and support that does not require you to tell them you'll order 100,000 pieces next year. I wish as much as anyone else that they sold their products for less, but the market clearly supports their existing prices.
- SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
  Yeah, AD (and LTC, before AD bought them) had the best documentation. And for low volume hobby production the added BOM cost isn't a big deal, it's definitely worth the time saved in reverse-engineering the part due to incomplete documentation. Due to that it sometimes even saves money, since you're less likely to destroy the part when trying to figure out how to use it.
xondono 6y ago
They're expensive until your application require that level of performance. The idea that prices should depend in any way of costs is ridiculous.
ohazi 6y ago
They really are. $5 for a $2 op-amp or a regulator is one thing, but when you need something slightly special, it goes to $10 or $20, just because TI doesn't have a comparable part. If you need more than a handful in your design, you're screwed. Yeah, their parts generally are very good, but the industry isn't healthy if they're the only company with good designs. All this consolidation has left a lot of room for a good competitor. We're not seeing one here in the US, because students today think analog stuff is terrifying black magic and avoid it like the plague, but I'm a little surprised we haven't seen any serious competitors out of China, since analog designs don't usually need the crazy expensive silicon processes that digital designs do. Also, for the same $20, would you rather sell a 0.5 cm^2 microprocessor at 45 nm, or a 0.1 cm^2 analog to digital converter at 130 nm? Analog ICs should be a really good business.
- phkahler 6y ago
  >> Yeah, their parts generally are very good, but the industry isn't healthy if they're the only company with good designs. >> All this consolidation has left a lot of room for a good competitor. Which will come from Asia. US companies seem to avoid competition as much as possible. The rather obvious outcome of that is they end up uncompetitive. The thing is, new stuff has to be developed while you are still profitable, not after someone is winning away your business.
- krapht 6y ago
  Students don't avoid it because analog is black magic, they avoid it because there's only a handful of places you can work at with that skill set. In the United States, today, an RF design engineer's job prospects are mostly limited to military contractors.
ckocagil 6y ago
Every single time this happens it's because there isn't much money to be made due to the low volume of sales, therefore no competition and no economies of scale. They make very exotic and state-of-the-art products. Where else would you get stuff like LTZ1000 or AD797?
jacquesm 6y ago
Better that something is expensive than that it is not for sale, and I'd rather pay up front than be shoehorned into some subscription model a-la software. Keep in mind that this stuff is physical and that software economies of scale do not apply. Not all of AD's chips are sold by the billion.

by rathel 6y ago

cpach 6y ago

Are there good and cheap alternatives? (Asking out of curiosity, I know almost nothing about this kind of hardware.)

dragontamer 6y ago
Chip costs are pretty low, all else considered. Yeah, AD is more expensive but I spend way less time reading documentation. If you're a hobbyist like me, you don't really care about spending $5 on a chip instead of $2 on a chip... especially when you're paying multiples of that for the PCB and other parts of the equation.
- jeffbee 6y ago
  Part of the fun of hobby building is you can design your stuff any way you want. Maybe nobody will mass-produce an audio preamp with $20 opamps inside, but you can DIY one if you feel like it. I built a digital audio interface with an ADI ultra-low-noise clock generator. It was a $20 part. That's a ridiculous price but it's also only $20.
  - formerly_proven 6y ago
    Also especially for audio stuff it's not like all op amps have to be high spec. At the edge (input/output) components matter much more than inside the circuit, where levels and impedances can be designed in. A low-noise BiFET op amp makes a ton of sense for pre-amp, but as a generic buffer or whatever amplifier between stages, not so much. Even in 2020 a NE5532 is a fine choice in those places.
    - dragontamer 6y ago
      In general, you can always substitute a high-quality, expensive op-amp for a cheap op-amp. From the perspective of a hobbyist with limited space: you want to minimize the SKUs that you stock in your personal shelves. Buying a higher-end op-amp and spamming it everywhere (even when its specs aren't needed) is far simpler than buying 10x different op-amps at the $0.50, $1, $1.50, $2, $3, $4, and $5 price points. Just keep a supply of higher-quality $5 rail-to-rail low-bias op-amps at the voltage-level (3.3V for most Arduino projects). Yeah, there's probably a $0.50 op-amp that does the job. But do you really want to keep another SKU on your shelf and keep track of it? There's simplicity in just buying over-specced parts for personal hobby projects. -------- Well... maybe keep a stock of the $0.50 stuff too (EDIT: Ah right, LMV358. That's the cheap part I keep around). But I think you get my gist. Personal-supply closet management is certainly a problem for the personal hobbyist.
      - segfaultbuserr 6y ago
        > In general, you can always substitute a high-quality, expensive op-amp for a cheap op-amp. Yes, it will work in general. Unless the expensive opamp has a significantly wider bandwidth, then one must use with caution. Switching from a low bandwidth opamp to a high bandwidth opamp is especially problematic, the loop characteristics are different and it may need additional frequency compensation or bandwidth limiting, the original layout may become inadequate, etc. More often than not, a blind replacement make it oscillate like crazy. Sometimes having a bunch of cheap opamps makes life easier. And financially - your heart and wallet won't start bleeding when your $0.5 opamp is unexpectedly zapped by ESD, cooked in soldering, or fried in an overload. Killing a $10 ASIC is a big deal (just did that last week while prototyping an ASIC controller, but there isn't anything cheaper on the market).
  - boojums 6y ago
    Do you have any information on your digial audio interface you can share? Seems like an interesting project.
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      Not that exciting really. I built an instrument that could measure very small levels of harmonic distortion induced by converter phase noise. Then, being so equipped, I made a converter with immeasurable phase noise. The instrumentation was the exciting part, in all honesty. $1000 off-the-shelf pro converters now exceed its performance.
      - boojums 6y ago
        I feel like "Not that exciting really" is underselling it given that your hobby project is matching current $1000 pro equipment, but that could just be my own ignorance with the subject matter.
        jeffbee 6y ago
        It's nice of you to say so. That's the nature of DIY. A hobbyist has some aesthetic or objective performance goals, but they have no economic goals, so the range of things that hobbyists build greatly exceeds the range of commercially available equipment.
- joezydeco 6y ago
  I'm working on a pretty expensive piece of measurement equipment and the $12 AD7193 I'm using seems expensive until you see how crazy accurate this thing is. It's worth every penny.
- flywheel 6y ago
  Hobbyists don't make up even a tiny sliver of their revenue. And if you're a hobbyist and paying any money at all for Analog Devices (or other semiconductor manufacturer's parts) then you're kinda doing it wrong - most of them have free samples: https://www.analog.com/en/support/customer-service-resources/sales/sample-products.html https://www.analog.com/en/support/customer-service-resources...

dragontamer 6y ago

AD's opamps are like $5 instead of $2. Since my home electronics projects are one-off things... the 250% increase for better documentation and better LTSpice models is well worth the $3 cost increase.

syedkarim 6y ago

Yes, they are expensive, but their products are generally of really high performance. In some cases, there are no actual competitors. Just take a look at the AD936x-class of RF ICs. What is the alternative to a part like that? ADI's documentation--relative to many chip makers--is outstanding. They have EVBs for almost all of their parts, open source hardware designs as well as firmware--and support that does not require you to tell them you'll order 100,000 pieces next year. I wish as much as anyone else that they sold their products for less, but the market clearly supports their existing prices.

SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
Yeah, AD (and LTC, before AD bought them) had the best documentation. And for low volume hobby production the added BOM cost isn't a big deal, it's definitely worth the time saved in reverse-engineering the part due to incomplete documentation. Due to that it sometimes even saves money, since you're less likely to destroy the part when trying to figure out how to use it.

xondono 6y ago

They're expensive until your application require that level of performance. The idea that prices should depend in any way of costs is ridiculous.

ohazi 6y ago

They really are. $5 for a $2 op-amp or a regulator is one thing, but when you need something slightly special, it goes to $10 or $20, just because TI doesn't have a comparable part. If you need more than a handful in your design, you're screwed. Yeah, their parts generally are very good, but the industry isn't healthy if they're the only company with good designs. All this consolidation has left a lot of room for a good competitor. We're not seeing one here in the US, because students today think analog stuff is terrifying black magic and avoid it like the plague, but I'm a little surprised we haven't seen any serious competitors out of China, since analog designs don't usually need the crazy expensive silicon processes that digital designs do. Also, for the same $20, would you rather sell a 0.5 cm^2 microprocessor at 45 nm, or a 0.1 cm^2 analog to digital converter at 130 nm? Analog ICs should be a really good business.

phkahler 6y ago
>> Yeah, their parts generally are very good, but the industry isn't healthy if they're the only company with good designs. >> All this consolidation has left a lot of room for a good competitor. Which will come from Asia. US companies seem to avoid competition as much as possible. The rather obvious outcome of that is they end up uncompetitive. The thing is, new stuff has to be developed while you are still profitable, not after someone is winning away your business.
krapht 6y ago
Students don't avoid it because analog is black magic, they avoid it because there's only a handful of places you can work at with that skill set. In the United States, today, an RF design engineer's job prospects are mostly limited to military contractors.

ckocagil 6y ago

Every single time this happens it's because there isn't much money to be made due to the low volume of sales, therefore no competition and no economies of scale. They make very exotic and state-of-the-art products. Where else would you get stuff like LTZ1000 or AD797?

jacquesm 6y ago

Better that something is expensive than that it is not for sale, and I'd rather pay up front than be shoehorned into some subscription model a-la software. Keep in mind that this stuff is physical and that software economies of scale do not apply. Not all of AD's chips are sold by the billion.