alt Hacker NewsNew Texas Instruments 5532 chips are not the 5532s we’ve used for decades
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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.
Also featured here: https://hackaday.com/2026/06/03/texas-instruments-changes-th...
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.
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.
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.
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 - 354 points by DyslexicAtheist on Jan 8, 2021 | 122 comments
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.
The Boeing 737 Max of chips …
EEVblog 1752 - Texas Instruments SCREWED UP the NE5532!
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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
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"
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.
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