David Grant wrote:

I hope this is an appropriate news group to post this (I apologize if not)

Well first of all I'll say a bit about myself... I'm an electrical
engineering student with an interest in audio electronics. In the third year
of my program we covered basic amplifier design, which I loved, and I've
been considering a career in this field since.

At the moment I'm particularly interested in microphone preamplifiers since
I'm a poor student who has his own project studio, but doesn't own (and
can't afford) a nice preamp like the Great River.

I'm having a good bit of trouble finding any info on design strategies that
are specific to microphone preamps. I've found some schematics on the net
but there's rarely any very detailed explanation given about why they were
designed the way they were, and what considerations were made. I understand
all the basic principles like CMRR, slew rate, etc... but there seems to be
some sort of understanding gap, and I'd like to bridge that gap. I realize
it's probably something I'm not going to be able to grasp over night, I'm
just looking for some kind of direction.

If anyone knows of any resources that would help me, I'd appreciate it.

The first thing you need to know with mic pre-amps is how to design with
discretes. Has your course covered that in any depth ? Relatively unlikely I'll
guess.

That's the first hurdle. A good understanding of differential circuitry,
feedback methods and noise calculations takes you further. Then you get into
understanding device parameters. Does rbb mean anything to you for example ?

Graham