5 ms·

New Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades

123 points by SpikedCola 4mo ago

buescher 4mo ago
This is why you should always order new parts for a new design and never, never trust the old guy with the magic parts box. Also why learning to read and compare data sheets skeptically is a fundamental skill.
- undersuit 4mo ago
  The rumbling and grumbling is because they read the data sheets.
  - buescher 4mo ago
    No, I’m talking about the guy that builds prototypes out of his magic parts box and says “oh, you can still get those” when the last direct substitute was obsoleted in 2008. Or he’s using the old version of a part like this in a “proven” subcircuit and NOT checking for change notices or other the new data sheets. That’s what I mean by the “magic parts box”. Buy new parts for new prototypes and read all the latest data, folks.
copperx 4mo ago
It's not clear if the SMT version is also bad?
- irdc 4mo ago
  There's no reason it isn't as the die is likely the same just in a different package.
RachelF 4mo ago
This sort of thing really annoys me. Part numbers are for use of engineers, not for the marketing dept. If you change the specs, change the part number.
- buescher 4mo ago
  It annoys me too but part numbers are not a spec but more of a strong hint. The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Even for a 2N2222 or whatever.
  - Our_Benefactors 4mo ago
    > The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Is this backed up by court precedent? This seems like you could easily claim damages due to a differently speccd part. I’m not doubting that’s how the industry operates, but it seems wrong so I’m curious what is supporting such a dysfunctional form of doing business.
    - buescher 4mo ago
      They’re just not really standardized at all, especially semiconductors. Not in the sense you’d expect naively. Some were a long time ago, and supposedly the old Japanese sc parts were, down to die geometry and process. But otherwise, the part number means “this is like the part with a similar number first made by someone else”, not “this is an exact replacement in every way”
    - ofalkaed 4mo ago
      It has worked this way since the days of the vacuum tube, so there probably is some legal precedence somewhere. I think part of this with the NE5532 is just that these days most EEs spend most of their time with digital where the data sheet and its spec is absolute; in the linear world the spec sheet is an ideal and an average because the parts themselves are an ideal and the real world never lines up with the math. Back when the NE5532 came out it was still common to see power supplies that were unregulated or barely regulated or cheap regulators with poor tolerance that would vary a fair amount with wall voltage and massive tolerances on passives, data sheets and EEs took this into account, most parts would survive max voltage but there would be a higher failure rate, so run at 70% or 80% and you don't have to worry about it. In these days of cheap SMPS and EEs that are trained with a strong lean towards digital and much improved IC fab, the max seems to be treated as the max safe voltage for good reliability and life, and you don't have to worry much about the tolerances of everything else so much. Back in the 90s when I was learning this stuff, the old EEs scolded me when ever I ran at max voltage and would patiently explain it all to me and that even if it can operate at that voltage, you can't be certain your PS will still be putting out that voltage in a year, parts drift as they age and accidents happen and the world is not ideal. They were right.
PunchyHamster 4mo ago
This is fucking dire. Lowering voltage will just lead to early failures for poor clueless designers/repairmen that had old datasheet saved and just assume it will never change but slew rate chance is just "well it works, but suddenly it's worse in certain applications"
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
phendrenad2 4mo ago
Something is going on over a TI. They tried to scrub their old datasheets from the web a few years ago too [1] [1] - Texas Instruments sent a DMCA takedown to a site archiving data sheets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682785 - 354 points by DyslexicAtheist on Jan 8, 2021 | 122 comments
- asdff 4mo ago
  Why do companies always do this? Always the largest companies with all the money to quietly host what at most a couple hundred mb of data and they just don't. Kill the old download links. Ruin all the old support articles that point to those old download links. Ruin all the old forum posts that point there. What is even crazier is sometimes they still have the files they just don't expose them, they make you beg for them with the support agent from across the world who asks if you have tried unplugging the thing first when you ask for the download you know you already want. Infuriating, boring dystopia.
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    Because they're changing out their backend CMS and have deemed it too expensive to port ask three old documentation over.
    - snvzz 4mo ago
      Does not explain the attempts to scrub from archives.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
- rpaddock 4mo ago
  I got one of those take down notices because I had their catalog of Space Grade Rad Hard parts on my website. About six directory levels down; did I give TI permission to invade my site?. Any Human would have seen it as promoting their parts, which was not the direct intention. The Bot just said it was a Copyright violation and I had to remove it from my site or they would send lawyers after me. It wasn't worth the time to fight. I've been screwed by TI many times in one way or other. As have colleagues. They did a die-change of a MSP430 and it stopped working in their product. No answer was forthcoming from TI. I had designed in a Silicon Labs Bluetooth module a few years ago. Now that TI has bought SiLabs, I'm designing it out. I simply don't trust TI. They once were a good company. They went downhill fast after they got rid of all of the support people and moved support online via forums.
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
rsynnott 4mo ago
Oh, wow, I was expecting from the title that, eh, maybe they changed the process or something, and someone was being a bit fussy. But yeah, no, different part.
- topspin 4mo ago
  Across the board TI is moving to new fabs, new fab processes and 300 mm wafers. So the old tooling is going away and they're adapting legacy designs to the new processes. This changes component behavior, particularly analog stuff, like these op amps. That's all inevitable and has happened in the semiconductor business before. When it happens, manufacturers are forced to choose; obsolete old parts that can't be indistinguishably reproduced on the new node, or and sell substantially different components under existing SKUs, so they can keep booking orders from high volume customers without disruption. In this case, the latter is happening. In all probability their high volume customers have already accounted for the PCN because TI told them it was coming years ago, back when the new fab buildout started and the lithography machines were first ordered.
  - fc417fc802 4mo ago
    > so they can keep booking orders from high volume customers without disruption. Clearly there is disruption though. It's more a matter of whether or not it's openly acknowledged.
burnt-resistor 4mo ago
EEVblog 1752 - Texas Instruments SCREWED UP the NE5532! https://youtu.be/22ZmmZ67SMY https://youtu.be/22ZmmZ67SMY ---- Summary of changes: - Input stage changed from NPN to PNP - Slew rate decreased from 9V/µs to 5V/µs - Supply voltages absolute ratings decreased from ±22V to ±18V
mikewarot 4mo ago
This is the electronics equivalent of Python3's breaking changes to string handling. It's pure evil, and will have 2nd order effects for decades.
- echoangle 4mo ago
  How were they python 3 changes pure evil? I think it was a good thing for the language in the long run, and the earlier you do it, the better.
  - ImprovedSilence 4mo ago
    In the long run, python projects just became an unmaintainable mess, and now lots of devs moved on or use python less. At least in my experience.
- rho138 4mo ago
  Because unicode and f-string replacements in an open source project are the devil and have completely similar parallels to a proprietary hardware chiplet being altered without any recourse? Axe grind me harder daddy.
  - mikewarot 4mo ago
    Unicode isn't the devil. Deliberately break compatibility and forcing everyone to rewrite code is. There were compatible ways to do it, but political correctness won out. >Axe grind me harder daddy. My axes are ambient authority based operating systems, programmers who call themselves engineers, and case sensitive programming languages. Unicode is fine, just don't take away my ASCII. ;-)
analog31 4mo ago
An amusing aside: Look at the list of "applications." Netbooks? Multichannel video transcoders? Scalable platforms? I've seen this in other TI datasheets. One old general purpose 74HC series logic chip included "E Meters" in its applications. My hunch is that whoever was assigned to add these "applications" to each data sheet was having some harmless fun. Another note is that I'm a low profile customer of Digi-Key and Mouser. Both of them send out change notifications on parts that I've ordered in the past.
- alnwlsn 4mo ago
  Funnily enough, E-Meters are known to be made with fairly high quality components. https://hackaday.com/2018/07/19/whats-inside-a-scientology-e-meter/ https://hackaday.com/2018/07/19/whats-inside-a-scientology-e... I guess if you have tons of cash rolling in, you might as well commit to it.
anonymousiam 4mo ago
Also featured here: https://hackaday.com/2026/06/03/texas-instruments-changes-the-ne5532-and-others-into-incompatible-versions/ https://hackaday.com/2026/06/03/texas-instruments-changes-th...
guiambros 4mo ago
Dave Jones didn't spare words [1] on how insane it was to have a jellybean component changing specs so significantly, particularly the input voltage from 22V to 18V, the removal of offset trim, and more. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZmmZ67SMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZmmZ67SMY
ycui7 4mo ago
There are better and superior alternative of NE5532 these days. People should just move on. OPA1612 is the king in highest-end audio performance, at least on datasheet paper.
- snvzz 4mo ago
  The ne5532 is not an awesome part by any means. It is a decent part, and an extremely popular one found in loads of designs. There's the saying anything you hear has passed through a pack of those before reaching your ears. This is why it is so bad for TI to change the specs without changing the part number.
BonoboIO 4mo ago
The Boeing 737 Max of chips …
ksec 4mo ago
And here I naively thought Texas Instruments is expensive but at least decent. Turns out no.
- ProllyInfamous 4mo ago
  Texceptionalism will kill us all.

123 points by SpikedCola 4mo ago

This is why you should always order new parts for a new design and never, never trust the old guy with the magic parts box. Also why learning to read and compare data sheets skeptically is a fundamental skill.

undersuit 4mo ago
The rumbling and grumbling is because they read the data sheets.
- buescher 4mo ago
  No, I’m talking about the guy that builds prototypes out of his magic parts box and says “oh, you can still get those” when the last direct substitute was obsoleted in 2008. Or he’s using the old version of a part like this in a “proven” subcircuit and NOT checking for change notices or other the new data sheets. That’s what I mean by the “magic parts box”. Buy new parts for new prototypes and read all the latest data, folks.

copperx 4mo ago

It's not clear if the SMT version is also bad?

irdc 4mo ago
There's no reason it isn't as the die is likely the same just in a different package.

RachelF 4mo ago

This sort of thing really annoys me. Part numbers are for use of engineers, not for the marketing dept. If you change the specs, change the part number.

buescher 4mo ago
It annoys me too but part numbers are not a spec but more of a strong hint. The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Even for a 2N2222 or whatever.
- Our_Benefactors 4mo ago
  > The attitude of the industry is that it’s up to you to read data sheets carefully and test. Is this backed up by court precedent? This seems like you could easily claim damages due to a differently speccd part. I’m not doubting that’s how the industry operates, but it seems wrong so I’m curious what is supporting such a dysfunctional form of doing business.
  - buescher 4mo ago
    They’re just not really standardized at all, especially semiconductors. Not in the sense you’d expect naively. Some were a long time ago, and supposedly the old Japanese sc parts were, down to die geometry and process. But otherwise, the part number means “this is like the part with a similar number first made by someone else”, not “this is an exact replacement in every way”
  - ofalkaed 4mo ago
    It has worked this way since the days of the vacuum tube, so there probably is some legal precedence somewhere. I think part of this with the NE5532 is just that these days most EEs spend most of their time with digital where the data sheet and its spec is absolute; in the linear world the spec sheet is an ideal and an average because the parts themselves are an ideal and the real world never lines up with the math. Back when the NE5532 came out it was still common to see power supplies that were unregulated or barely regulated or cheap regulators with poor tolerance that would vary a fair amount with wall voltage and massive tolerances on passives, data sheets and EEs took this into account, most parts would survive max voltage but there would be a higher failure rate, so run at 70% or 80% and you don't have to worry about it. In these days of cheap SMPS and EEs that are trained with a strong lean towards digital and much improved IC fab, the max seems to be treated as the max safe voltage for good reliability and life, and you don't have to worry much about the tolerances of everything else so much. Back in the 90s when I was learning this stuff, the old EEs scolded me when ever I ran at max voltage and would patiently explain it all to me and that even if it can operate at that voltage, you can't be certain your PS will still be putting out that voltage in a year, parts drift as they age and accidents happen and the world is not ideal. They were right.

PunchyHamster 4mo ago

This is fucking dire. Lowering voltage will just lead to early failures for poor clueless designers/repairmen that had old datasheet saved and just assume it will never change but slew rate chance is just "well it works, but suddenly it's worse in certain applications"

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

phendrenad2 4mo ago

Something is going on over a TI. They tried to scrub their old datasheets from the web a few years ago too [1] [1] - Texas Instruments sent a DMCA takedown to a site archiving data sheets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682785 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682785 - 354 points by DyslexicAtheist on Jan 8, 2021 | 122 comments

asdff 4mo ago
Why do companies always do this? Always the largest companies with all the money to quietly host what at most a couple hundred mb of data and they just don't. Kill the old download links. Ruin all the old support articles that point to those old download links. Ruin all the old forum posts that point there. What is even crazier is sometimes they still have the files they just don't expose them, they make you beg for them with the support agent from across the world who asks if you have tried unplugging the thing first when you ask for the download you know you already want. Infuriating, boring dystopia.
- fragmede 4mo ago
  Because they're changing out their backend CMS and have deemed it too expensive to port ask three old documentation over.
  - snvzz 4mo ago
    Does not explain the attempts to scrub from archives.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
rpaddock 4mo ago
I got one of those take down notices because I had their catalog of Space Grade Rad Hard parts on my website. About six directory levels down; did I give TI permission to invade my site?. Any Human would have seen it as promoting their parts, which was not the direct intention. The Bot just said it was a Copyright violation and I had to remove it from my site or they would send lawyers after me. It wasn't worth the time to fight. I've been screwed by TI many times in one way or other. As have colleagues. They did a die-change of a MSP430 and it stopped working in their product. No answer was forthcoming from TI. I had designed in a Silicon Labs Bluetooth module a few years ago. Now that TI has bought SiLabs, I'm designing it out. I simply don't trust TI. They once were a good company. They went downhill fast after they got rid of all of the support people and moved support online via forums.

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

rsynnott 4mo ago

Oh, wow, I was expecting from the title that, eh, maybe they changed the process or something, and someone was being a bit fussy. But yeah, no, different part.

topspin 4mo ago
Across the board TI is moving to new fabs, new fab processes and 300 mm wafers. So the old tooling is going away and they're adapting legacy designs to the new processes. This changes component behavior, particularly analog stuff, like these op amps. That's all inevitable and has happened in the semiconductor business before. When it happens, manufacturers are forced to choose; obsolete old parts that can't be indistinguishably reproduced on the new node, or and sell substantially different components under existing SKUs, so they can keep booking orders from high volume customers without disruption. In this case, the latter is happening. In all probability their high volume customers have already accounted for the PCN because TI told them it was coming years ago, back when the new fab buildout started and the lithography machines were first ordered.
- fc417fc802 4mo ago
  > so they can keep booking orders from high volume customers without disruption. Clearly there is disruption though. It's more a matter of whether or not it's openly acknowledged.

burnt-resistor 4mo ago

EEVblog 1752 - Texas Instruments SCREWED UP the NE5532! https://youtu.be/22ZmmZ67SMY https://youtu.be/22ZmmZ67SMY ---- Summary of changes: - Input stage changed from NPN to PNP - Slew rate decreased from 9V/µs to 5V/µs - Supply voltages absolute ratings decreased from ±22V to ±18V

mikewarot 4mo ago

This is the electronics equivalent of Python3's breaking changes to string handling. It's pure evil, and will have 2nd order effects for decades.

echoangle 4mo ago
How were they python 3 changes pure evil? I think it was a good thing for the language in the long run, and the earlier you do it, the better.
- ImprovedSilence 4mo ago
  In the long run, python projects just became an unmaintainable mess, and now lots of devs moved on or use python less. At least in my experience.
rho138 4mo ago
Because unicode and f-string replacements in an open source project are the devil and have completely similar parallels to a proprietary hardware chiplet being altered without any recourse? Axe grind me harder daddy.
- mikewarot 4mo ago
  Unicode isn't the devil. Deliberately break compatibility and forcing everyone to rewrite code is. There were compatible ways to do it, but political correctness won out. >Axe grind me harder daddy. My axes are ambient authority based operating systems, programmers who call themselves engineers, and case sensitive programming languages. Unicode is fine, just don't take away my ASCII. ;-)

analog31 4mo ago

An amusing aside: Look at the list of "applications." Netbooks? Multichannel video transcoders? Scalable platforms? I've seen this in other TI datasheets. One old general purpose 74HC series logic chip included "E Meters" in its applications. My hunch is that whoever was assigned to add these "applications" to each data sheet was having some harmless fun. Another note is that I'm a low profile customer of Digi-Key and Mouser. Both of them send out change notifications on parts that I've ordered in the past.

alnwlsn 4mo ago
Funnily enough, E-Meters are known to be made with fairly high quality components. https://hackaday.com/2018/07/19/whats-inside-a-scientology-e-meter/ https://hackaday.com/2018/07/19/whats-inside-a-scientology-e... I guess if you have tons of cash rolling in, you might as well commit to it.

anonymousiam 4mo ago

Also featured here: https://hackaday.com/2026/06/03/texas-instruments-changes-the-ne5532-and-others-into-incompatible-versions/ https://hackaday.com/2026/06/03/texas-instruments-changes-th...

guiambros 4mo ago

Dave Jones didn't spare words [1] on how insane it was to have a jellybean component changing specs so significantly, particularly the input voltage from 22V to 18V, the removal of offset trim, and more. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZmmZ67SMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ZmmZ67SMY

ycui7 4mo ago

There are better and superior alternative of NE5532 these days. People should just move on. OPA1612 is the king in highest-end audio performance, at least on datasheet paper.

snvzz 4mo ago
The ne5532 is not an awesome part by any means. It is a decent part, and an extremely popular one found in loads of designs. There's the saying anything you hear has passed through a pack of those before reaching your ears. This is why it is so bad for TI to change the specs without changing the part number.

BonoboIO 4mo ago

The Boeing 737 Max of chips …

ksec 4mo ago

And here I naively thought Texas Instruments is expensive but at least decent. Turns out no.

ProllyInfamous 4mo ago
Texceptionalism will kill us all.