The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was merge to DIY audio. merge the objective material, not what seem to be statements of opinion. Better done by someone expert in the field, not by myself. DGG ( talk ) 02:40, 3 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Op-amp swapping[edit]

Op-amp swapping (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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I almost hate to nominate this, because it's a nice article about a technical subject. Unfortunately, there's no good (i.e. WP:RS) sources, and this boils down to a mix of WP:HOWTO and WP:OR. Searching for the term op amp swapping, comes up with very few sources, all of which are blogs and other unreliable sources. -- RoySmith (talk) 23:25, 15 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

A Merge as suggested by Mark viking would be a plausible WP:ATD, but the merged material should be mentioning that this practice exists, and describing it in brief, avoiding all of the HOWTO and OR of the current article.. -- RoySmith (talk) 15:20, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

That would be fine with me. --Mark viking (talk)

I disagree. What does the article say about swapping op amps in audio equipment? "there are very small, if any, audible differences between suitable op-amps." In other words, swapping op amps isn't going to make the audio device appreciably better, so swapping the part in the device for another one won't lead to an improvement. The practice is pointless. If there is improvement, then the device was not designed well, so WP shouldn't care about it. If the device needs repair, then one can replace the op amp with the same part and be done with it. In the alternative, there might be an equivalent op amp that would also serve -- but that is pretty standard repair practice. The material is not WP:DUE. Glrx (talk) 22:45, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

For the record, I agree with you on all your technical points. The practice is pointless, but so are a lot of things in the audiophile community--witness all the myth and nonsense surrounding speaker wire that is discussed at Speaker wire#Quality debate. The question is, is this practice, whatever its merits, worth mentioning in the DIY article? To me, there are enough sources out there to demonstrate this practice exists and is worth a mention. But reasonable editors can disagree about whether it s notable enough to merit a mention. --Mark viking (talk) 20:23, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reliable sourcing is a Pillar. The sources are WP:UNDUE so they have no right to WP's electronic ink. ("If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong on Wikipedia, regardless of whether it is true or you can prove it, except perhaps in some ancillary article.") If you agree the practice is pointless but think existence merits coverage, then invoke WP:IAR to let this nonsense disappear. The speaker wire issue is much more prominent (and has more money behind it: a $1 op amp is not a $50 cable). Furthermore, there is not a raging debate that makes the issue important (e.g., equivalent of the oxygen-free copper debate). WP does not have a charter to cover everything. Glrx (talk) 20:01, 27 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Technology-related deletion discussions. Lemongirl942 (talk) 11:09, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Merge to DIY audio. Searching for op amp replacing or op amp ungrade yielded some more sources. Here are a Texas Instruments page, and products from Creative X-Fi, Creative Sound Blaster, and an op-amp upgrade kit for Gigabyte motherboards. Here are a couple of articles on the topic [1], [2]. Here is a review of a Burson op-amp upgrade kit. So it seems clear that there are reliable sources out there discussing various aspects of this practice. I don't know if these source add up to notability, as none discuss much the practice of upgrading, its impact, etc. as a whole. But there is enough verifiable material in RS to merge the basics into the more general DIY audio article, which could use the sources. --Mark viking (talk) 20:43, 16 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete. The article is how to information (which is not WP's charter), and the article has misinformation. There's a generalization: "In properly-designed circuits, there are very small, if any, audible differences between suitable op-amps." Perhaps that is true, but it has the guarantor "suitable". The figure suggests that a bipolar μA741 and a JFET LF412 are interchangeable; sometimes yes, and sometimes no; input bias current and input offset current are much smaller for the JFET; JFET designs often skip offset current balancing. The statement "most op-amps have the same pinouts" is an oversimplification. The DIP8 pinout for a single opamp is different from the DIP8 pinout for a dual. Even when the pinout is the same, the voltage ratings may not be. A μA741 will take ±15 V supplies; many more modern opamps are designed for 5 V (e.g., MAX4336). A μA741 won't work in a 5V rail-to-rail design. There are gain issues. There are frequency compensation issues (LF356 and LF357 are closely related but not interchangeable). The information is unsourced (manufacturer drivel/blogs) and dubious, so a merge is not appropriate. Glrx (talk) 19:28, 18 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete I agree with nom. The references are not about op-amp swapping but about op-amps that are pin-compatible and thus can be swapped, which is fundamentally different from a practise of swapping them to change perceived sound quality. DeVerm (talk) 01:44, 22 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak Delete Unless we use WP:IAR to add those blogs as reliable sources (which would never happen), there's no way this should be kept. Peter Sam Fan 19:41, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge and redirect to DIY audio, as suggested. From what I can tell, there appear to be a decent amount of purely technical sources that document it very well, but don't really enable it to stand on it's own. It could very easily be converted into a section on DIY audio, as it itself is barely a section and a half of content, but it seems to be a fairly important concept in DIY audio modification. Tpdwkouaa (talk) 20:32, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to DIY audio and condense these paragraphs down to just two paragraphs on claims and scientific evaluation - the nwavguy post is good. -- Callinus (talk) 19:52, 28 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge as above. It'd be a shame to lose the good information in this article, even if the subject itself doesn't merit its own article (and it doesn't really). ✤ Fosse 8 ✤ 14:35, 1 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Merge to DIY audio, which presently does not mention the topic. This will improve the merge target article. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 07:36, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.