# Soraa GaN on GaN -- high CRI like you've never seen before



## Xe54 (Nov 24, 2014)

Hi:

Recently I've bought 7 different models of flashlights with Nichia 219 and 219b LEDs in them because I'm sick and tired of Cree LEDs' green hue when dimmed. Or ugly yellow/orange "high-CRI" neutral white. If I wanted orange light, I'd buy a damn lightbulb! I'm a 4000-5000K pure Plankian lover. Deviate just a bit in X or Y and I want to vomit.

Even the Nichia flashlights are disappointing me lately. I'll comment on this more extensively in another thread.

What I wish to mention here is this company, partly founded by Nobel Prize winner Shuji Nakamura, the inventor of the blue LED!

http://www.soraa.com/

I recently bought two Soraa MR16 lamps through 1000bulbs.com in order to evaluate their tech. 95CRI 10deg spot models 00733 (4000K), and 00349 (5000K). I won't post pictures because I've got health problems that make me take 2 hrs to do the simplest thing that should take 5 minutes. And there'd be not much point anyway, since it would have to go through the camera's idea of white, several layers of image processing, then your non-photographic-laboratory grade, non-calibrated monitor. The only way to see these things is to buy one and hook it up to a power supply.

The point is: When I've experimented with these lamps it's like seeing white light for the first time in my life. They put every LED from Cree, Nichia, Lumileds, Luminus, etc. to shame. It's absolutely friggin' perfect white light. With a deep red and deep violet spectral tail and no missing cyan, so every color imaginable can be rendered correctly.

Think about what happens here: 1. a cyan object whose reflectance spectrum consists of a blue and a green peak. Well, a traditional LED with a blue peak and a red through green "blob" will show it as cyan, but probably with significant variance in hue from one LED specimen to another. 2. a cyan object whose reflectance spectrum consists of a cyan peak. Well, what on earth is going to happen now? A regular LED is going to show it as, uhm, well, who really knows? But it might be some ugly olive or something, which I've actually seen an orange turn into with an older white RGB in one semiconductor chip LED tech.

Weird problems like this can happen because two widely different spectra can map to the same CIE chromaticity coordinates. But depending on the light source spectrum, different types of which can also map to the same pure white coordinates, it is possible for pathological cases to present themselves where the color that must be reflected to your eyes to see the color of the object just are not present in the light source spectrum in the needed proportions! Then you will see something truly wrong with the picture and realize that we have a long way to go for LEDs to be truly high color rendering light sources, other than just by the one metric of CRI.

Take the time to read about Soraa's technology. It is truly [r]evolutionary. I'm planning to take one of their lamps apart at work to see what's in there. From their www site, I gather than the GaN on GaN crystal permits much higher current densities than regular sapphire grown LEDs, so that they are actually using a much smaller emitter area for a given amount of lumens than would be the case for ex. in a Cree lamp of similar output.

Got that?!?! Doesn't that make the little LED light bulbs start popping on in your flashaholic brains? Think about what you could do with the output of a Cree XM-L coming from 1.33mm^2 instead of 4mm^2?!?! With 95CRI to boot!

Anyway, if you have the money, buy a sample of one of their MR16 lamps. Your perceptions of all your great flashlights will be ruined for life.

The question is now, how to persuade this company to market their LED tech. as bare emitters instead of integrated into these silly MR16 lamps? I may try to approach them in the future, as I do research using colored LEDs under extremely short pulse and absurdly high current conditions. So I have some important technical reasons to be interested in Soraa other than just white light. But like I said, I'm somewhat impaired these days, so I don't get things done very quickly.

This is an extremely important technology to keep an eye on (the eye that isn't blinded yet). It would be a bummer IMHO if GaN on GaN failed to gain traction in the marketplace. Hopefully, the days of LED manufacturers winning market share by increasing luminous efficiency at the expense of quality of white light are nearing their end.

Have fun!


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## Newguy2012 (Nov 25, 2014)

Interesting... I'll check it out. I always wanted a 95cri at 4000k+ CCT. The price seem reasonable. But I have do some wiring to install these lamps. Why not an Edison bulb?


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## mvyrmnd (Nov 25, 2014)

I might buy one of the 12V MR16's and whack it in my old Maglight that's set up for that.


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## Mr. Tone (Nov 25, 2014)

Very nice find. I am very picky about tints and anything that will get us closer to natural, black-body type light gets me excited. It would really be great if they could make emitters with this tech that could be used in flashlights. Now I have to see if I can find a flashlight that can use those MR16 bulbs. It is good to see that they also have a range of PAR lamps with this tech for the more common household fixtures.


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## Toolboxkid (Nov 25, 2014)

It really is all about the tint, would love to see this break into the flashlight world.


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## Xe54 (Nov 25, 2014)

Oh, another cool thing about Soraa's MR16s is that they have the "Snap System" of beam spreaders & shapers, color shifters, and a anti-glare louvre thing that magnetically attach to the front of the lamp.

http://www.soraa.com/products/snap-system

I think this is only compatible with the narrow spot lamps--check compatibility with any model you consider. It took me a while to find the .pdf datasheets for the right lamps on their www site, since it seems they just released a new generation, but the old ones are still in distribution.

Now I just have to find some cool MR16 fixtures to plug these into and use them all over my house. The versatility is great. I'd like a flex lamp sticking out of the wall over my desk that I can put on a diffuser and make into a ceiling washer for general area lighting, then point it at my desk and add the louver if I need a task light but don't want the glare to get in my wife's eyes nearby. If I'm climbing the shelves to tinker with cables up there I can take the spreader off and wash close to my work area.

Or I can just point it at a white wall and stare, drooling over the lusciously clean whiteness of it.


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## Xe54 (Nov 25, 2014)

Newguy2012 said:


> Interesting... I'll check it out. I always wanted a 95cri at 4000k+ CCT. The price seem reasonable. But I have do some wiring to install these lamps. Why not an Edison bulb?



It seems that their target market initially is professional display lighting.

There seem to be some folks in this forum that are awfully skilled at making connections with LED manufacturers to procure the very best bins of LEDs. I often wonder how they do it since whenever I try I get told bullshit like "you can't buy that bin, you have to buy a barrel of 4 bins, with no guarantee that the one you want is in there" or some such sillyness.

So a very tactful business-like person should probably talk to them about their road map and encourage them to develop a bare emitter product. The promise of lots of free word-of-mouth advert. in an enthusiast community never hurts. Hopefully the company is smart enough to recognize the value of that.

I wonder how much of the demographic here is engineers that also deploy professionally the products that they get attached to through hobbies? This "familiarity effect" is a powerful force in the embedded microcontroller world, which is why any chip maker with a brain wants to get free samples and dev. kits into the hands of student engineers.


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## Xe54 (Nov 25, 2014)

Toolboxkid said:


> It really is all about the tint, would love to see this break into the flashlight world.



Imagine the day when tint (hue, really) is no longer even a topic of consideration.

Color temp. is a different story. There simply has to be a range of options for CCT.

But white is white no matter the CCT. Not greenish-white, or purplish white. Just white!

Oh, Soraa did some research having people stare at white shirts on display. They preferred the Soraa illuminated shirts because the violet pump wavelength also strongly excites the fluorescent whitening dyes.


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## DIWdiver (Nov 25, 2014)

Xe54 said:


> Or I can just point it at a white wall and stare, drooling over the lusciously clean whiteness of it.



Dude, are you about to become a serial killer?:laughing: You sound a bit Hannibal Lecter-ish to me...

Unfortunately, I understand where you are coming from.


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## Anders Hoveland (Nov 25, 2014)

Xe54 said:


> The question is now, how to persuade this company to market their LED tech. as bare emitters instead of integrated into these silly MR16 lamps?



Yuji sells high CRI LEDs based on violet emitters, though they do not use GaN on GaN technology.




Xe54 said:


> Oh, Soraa did some research having people stare at white shirts on display. They preferred the Soraa illuminated shirts because the violet pump wavelength also strongly excites the fluorescent whitening dyes.


Violet based LEDs have amazing quality of light, but I have some reservations about whether these LEDs are the best for general lighting, since violet frequency light can be irritating on the eyes (not really that different than fluorescent). I wish they could make these high CRI LEDs so that non of the violet wavelength gets through (use a thicker phosphor layer). One could still have amazingly high CRI without the violet.

When violet/UV light hits the optical brighteners in white clothing, they glow with cyan-blue wavelength light. That is what is so beautiful. 
I suppose there could instead just be a separate 485-490nm emitter added in to the lamp to illuminate whites and it would basically give a similar effect.


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## Newguy2012 (Nov 25, 2014)

Xe54 said:


> It seems that their target market initially is professional display lighting.
> 
> There seem to be some folks in this forum that are awfully skilled at making connections with LED manufacturers to procure the very best bins of LEDs. I often wonder how they do it since whenever I try I get told bullshit like "you can't buy that bin, you have to buy a barrel of 4 bins, with no guarantee that the one you want is in there" or some such sillyness.
> 
> ...


I think pretty much 85+ cri is for the professional display lighting. Lucky me for I don't have to any wiring after all. I have a recessed light in my kitchen that I never use. I think their par30 would fit if add 2in socket extension. Do you have their par30 lamp? If you do can you tell me how long the base is starting from under the fins?


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## Toolboxkid (Nov 25, 2014)

I literally have not been able to stop thinking about this led tech all day! I'm going to have to buy a set of the spotlights and see just how amazing they really are.


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## Xe54 (Nov 28, 2014)

Newguy2012 said:


> I think pretty much 85+ cri is for the professional display lighting. Lucky me for I don't have to any wiring after all. I have a recessed light in my kitchen that I never use. I think their par30 would fit if add 2in socket extension. Do you have their par30 lamp? If you do can you tell me how long the base is starting from under the fins?



Can't you find all the detailed specs on their www site incl. mechanical dims?

I only have a few MR16s.


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## Newguy2012 (Nov 29, 2014)

I found them. It looks like it'll fit. Does the 4000K look like whiter than the Nichia 4500K? The 4k seem to have the highest CRI (97). It has a higher r12 than the 5000k which I thought was strange.

I've been google around on which color temperature is consider Neutral white. A result says 4000k is neutral.

How accurate are this pictures representing the tint? http://www.calgarylightingproducts.com/colour-temperature-guide/
http://www.elightbulbs.com/customer...ature&room_type=Residential&room_name=Kitchen
The elightbulbs comparison look warm whereas Calgary pics look more neutral.


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## SemiMan (Nov 30, 2014)

The Calgary tints are highly exaggerated especially towards warmth. The 5000k and 4100k look much warmer than reality. When it is the only light source, 4100 feels very neutral and whites look "white". 

Semiman


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## Reedman (Dec 16, 2014)

"Interesting... I'll check it out. I always wanted a 95cri at 4000k+ CCT. The price seem reasonable. But I have do some wiring to install these lamps. Why not an Edison bulb?"

If you want a Soraa edison-base bulb, they have them. They are the PAR30, PAR38, and forthcoming PAR20 shapes. Just not the probably-more-familiar A-lamp form factor.
Check the website for more info

"So a very tactful business-like person should probably talk to them about their road map and encourage them to develop a bare emitter product. The promise of lots of free word-of-mouth advert. in an enthusiast community never hurts. Hopefully the company is smart enough to recognize the value of that."

Soraa has this covered as well. They have their "Light Engines" and "Constant Current" lamps, which are their light chips mounted in a heat sink with a lens in front (no driver electronics). You need to provide a constant-current driver
capable of 26-32 volts DC, which is a more complicated situation than using standard retrofit lamps. Look at the website for more details.


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## Newguy2012 (Dec 16, 2014)

The Par30 are backordered til 2/5/2015. THat's a long wait.


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## Anders Hoveland (Feb 15, 2015)

(click here for picture)

Here's my Yuji violet-emitter 10w LED lamp (>97cri). The quality of light feels like a world of difference from standard blue-emitter LED (even a 95cri LED doesn't hold a candle to it). The quality of light is somewhere on the scale between ceramic metal halide and natural daylight. Even though it is rated 5000K, it still almost feels like some sort of halogen light (if it was possible to get halogen in a higher color temperature). I got it as a commercial sample, so the lamp itself is not really high quality (there is substantial flicker).




Xe54 said:


> The point is: When I've experimented with these lamps it's like seeing white light for the first time in my life. They put every LED from Cree, Nichia, Lumileds, Luminus, etc. to shame. It's absolutely friggin' perfect white light.


My observations lead me to share your opinion. 

I really don't think it's so much about containing violet light or not, I think it's the presence of 480-490nm greenish-blue wavelengths that leads to the better light quality. Since the blue wavelengths are generated by phosphor, rather than directly by the emitter, all the wavelengths are there.

Unfortunately, I have rare skin sensitivity issues, and this violet emitter LED lamp has confirmed that my sensitivity is caused by violet wavelengths.  (I don't have any skin sensitivity issues with regular LED).


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## Mr. Tone (Feb 15, 2015)

That's too bad, hopefully you can find a solution.


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## SemiMan (Feb 16, 2015)

Mr. Tone said:


> That's too bad, hopefully you can find a solution.



A solution could be difficult to find. Hyper attention Muchausen Syndrome is not the easiest thing to cure.

Semiman


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## Mr. Tone (Feb 19, 2015)

SemiMan said:


> A solution could be difficult to find. Hyper attention Muchausen Syndrome is not the easiest thing to cure.
> 
> Semiman



Are you saying that you believe it is all in his head (Munchausen syndrome) as opposed to something real like photodermatitis? Did he state that somewhere in another post, I am just curious why you suggested that?


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## SemiMan (Feb 19, 2015)

Mr. Tone said:


> Are you saying that you believe it is all in his head (Munchausen syndrome) as opposed to something real like photodermatitis? Did he state that somewhere in another post, I am just curious why you suggested that?



Best not for this thread.


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## Mr. Tone (Feb 19, 2015)

SemiMan said:


> Best not for this thread.



No problem


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