I guess Analog Devices makes LTSpice, so it makes sense that they'd be all in for that kind of support.
https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/appl...
"High Speed Amplifier Techniques
A Designer’s Companion for Wideband Circuitry
Jim Williams
This publication represents the largest LTC commitmentto an application note to date. No other application noteabsorbed as much effort, took so long or cost so much."
More of his app notes for the curious: http://readingjimwilliams.blogspot.com/
Even reading their datasheets, I often felt like I was being taught a full lesson on the topic, which is great when you're an amateur and lack some of the foundational knowledge.
https://www.xilinx.com/about/xcell-publications/xcell-journa...
https://gist.github.com/dantler/f26d75f1051db13649aaedf73f7d...
Avoid them at all cost.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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).
https://www.analog.com/en/support/customer-service-resources...
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.
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.
The idea that prices should depend in any way of costs is ridiculous.
$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.
>> 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.
In the United States, today, an RF design engineer's job prospects are mostly limited to military contractors.
They make very exotic and state-of-the-art products. Where else would you get stuff like LTZ1000 or AD797?