[...]... Importance of Power Amplifiers Audio power amplifiers are of considerable economic importance They are built in their hundreds of thousands every year, and have a history extending back to the 1920s It is therefore surprising there have been so few books dealing in any depth with solid-state power amplifier design The first aim of this text is to fill that need, by providing a detailed guide to the many design. .. must be taken when a power amplifier is designed The second aim is to disseminate the results of the original work done on amplifier design in the last few years The unexpected result of these investigations was to show that power amplifiers of extraordinarily low distortion could be designed as a matter of routine, without any unwelcome side-effects, so long as a relatively simple design methodology was... discrete power amplifier design is rather unenterprising, given the enormous outpouring of ingenuity in the design of analog integrated circuits Advances in op-amp design would appear to be particularly relevant I have therefore spent some considerable time studying this massive body of material and I have had to regretfully conclude that it is actually a very sparse source of inspiration for new audio power. .. Survey 5 Power amplifier design has often been treated as something of a black art, with the implication that the design process is extremely complex and its outcome not very predictable I hope to show that this need no longer be the case, and that power amplifiers are now designable – in other words it is possible to predict reasonably accurately the practical performance of a purely theoretical design. .. 266 Power- supply technologies 266 Simple unregulated power supplies 266 Advantages 266 Disadvantages 266 Linear regulated power supplies 267 Advantages 267 Disadvantages 267 Switch-mode power supplies 268 Advantages 268 Disadvantages 269 A devious alternative to regulated power. .. output relays 466 Output crowbar DC protection 469 Protection by power- supply shutdown 470 Thermal protection 471 Mains-fail detection 475 Powering auxiliary circuitry 477 Chapter 18 Grounding, cooling, and layout 479 Audio amplifier PCB design 479 Crosstalk 479 Rail induction distortion ... specified load capacitance across the high-impedance output This does not appear to be a promising approach to making audio power amplifiers ● Much of the op-amp material is concerned with the common-mode performance of the input stage This is pretty much irrelevant to power amplifier design ● Many circuit techniques rely heavily on the matching of device characteristics possible in IC fabrication, and... therefore not pursued the FET route very far Similarly, most of my practical design experience has been on amplifiers of less than 300 W power output, and so heavyduty designs for large-scale public address (PA) work are also under-represented I think this is preferable to setting down untested speculation The Study of Amplifier Design Although solid-state amplifiers have been around for some 40 years, it... amplifiers of extremely low distortion (sub-0.001% at 1 kHz) to be designed and built as a matter of routine, using only modest amounts of global negative feedback Misinformation in Audio Few fields of technical endeavor are more plagued with errors, misstatements and confusion than audio In the last 20 years, the rise of controversial and non-rational audio hypotheses, gathered under the title Subjectivism has... operation of almost any design Such problems arise because audio electronics is a more technically complex subject than it at first appears It is easy to cobble together some sort of power amplifier that works, and this can give people an altogether exaggerated view of how deeply they understand what they have created In contrast, no one is likely to take a ‘subjective’ approach to the design of an aeroplane . x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" Audio Power Amplifi er Design Handbook This book is dedicated to Julie, without whom it would not have happened. Audio Power Amplifi er Design Handbook Fifth Edition Douglas. Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Self, Douglas. Audio power amplifi er design handbook. – 5th ed. 1. Audio amplifi ers Design. 2. Power amplifi ers Design. I. Title 621.3’81535—dc22 Library. gurations 264 Chapter 9 Power supplies and PSRR 266 Power- supply technologies 266 Simple unregulated power supplies 266 Advantages 266 Disadvantages 266 Linear regulated power supplies 267