Richard Black said:
"1 uSec is not human capability, but an arbitrary factor of ten better setpoint I wish to work with..my point being, your setup, I suspect, is incapable of resolution at that level.."
Of course it is. The limits are timing jitter (order of ns), amplitude jitter (order of -85dB) and nonlinear distortion (order of -100dB) - the respective importance of each of those depending on what exactly one is trying to measure, how, at what frequency. Absolutely no idea what the requirements of MRI superconducting wotsits would be as I've never worked in that area of electronics, but this is audio we're talking about - few tens of V/us, not much over 1A/us (actually with real music considerably less than 1A/us).
We are speaking apples and oranges...I am quite sure you are correct in your system's capabilities...I am not arguing that.
What I am saying is that you are not measuring the voltage correctly because of the high slew rate currents..ahhh,, guess I'll hafta explain...
Take a 250 watt 8 ohm non inductive resistor..as a load.
It's physical dimensions....say 6 inches long, 2 inches wide..
the physical inductance minimum this load can present: using terman's equation, about .15 uH. And, this is with zero actual resistor inductance.
Now, your 1 amp/uSec slew rate...the reactive voltage across the load: .15 volts at peak slew. The actual voltage across the load is the amp voltage minus this reactive component. you can't measure it...because the loop you form in connecting to this load, picks up the magnetic field that the loop is generating. The best you can do with this load, is to measure the voltage plus the error component. If you could run the test lead through the middle of the resistor, you will break that loop intercept, and read the EXACT load voltage. Note that this error becomes more and more significant as the impedance of the load goes down...this is because the resistive voltage becomes smaller with resistive drop, while the error component remains the same, and is based only on geometry.
You have exactly two choices when measuring slew rates at these impedances...use a Danfysik style current measuring toroid, which is in itself bandwidth limited, or go with a coaxial resistor where the voltage pickup is through the geometric and magnetic center of the resistor..the latter is exactly what I am making..however, I have experience in both, so can advise on the limitations of each.
RB said:
No, I can't post pictures of my setup because I haven't got a digital camera.
I can, and will do so here if you request.
But of course you can just attach a pair of leads at this sort of frequency. It's not hard to prove - just change the length or termination method or something and watch the measurements stay constant within measurement limits
Actually, I have done so, from 4 Giga amps per second into 1 ohm, 6000 amp half sine into 250 uOhms (here I had to remove the b dot term down to less than 5 millivolts, as I was measuring the temperature of a 3 inch diameter diode during the current pulse), and even at 22 Khz into a .1 ohm resistive load..
What I am explaining to you is exactly what I found in errors, and the methods and designs I had to do in order to eliminate them. Experience in real setups, I am not speaking academically.
Gotta go for now, a tour to guide..
Cheers, John
Note:followup, Jan 14:
You said:
"but this is audio we're talking about - few tens of V/us, not much over 1A/us"
Hmm...a few tens of volts per uSEc? Is that a correct number? If so, then, into 8 ohms, 20 volts/uSec is, 2.5 A/uSec...5 amps/uSec into 4 ohms..let's re-think the numbers...
A power load with .15Uh inductance....
.15 uH load inductance will be 375 millivolts error into 8 ohms, 750 millivolts into 4 ohms.
And, look at a zip cable...200nH per foot, 10 feet, 2 uH...at 5 v/uSec, 10 volts? TEN? You're looking at a 90 degree lagging cosine with 10 volt amplitude...one that you can't readily measure, due to e/m field errors, and a sine measurement will say "zero distortion"..and, the speaker needs the current as that is what forces the voice coil...not the voltage.
Look at my double coax, 10 nH per foot, 100 nH ten feet...into 4 ohms, it will react with half a volt..meaning the current will slew at the speaker more like the amp intended..
Hence my use of the term "sloppy" earlier on..it is a rather unkind sounding word, and really is meant to express how present test methods need to be upgraded. One cannot address current slew rate capability if one does not know how to measure it properly.
Cheers, John