TABLE OF CONTENTS 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 decisions that must be taken when a power amplifier is designed.
The second aim is 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 followed. This methodology will be explained in detail.
To keep its length reasonable, a book such as this must assume a basic knowledge of audio electronics. I do not propose to plough through the definitions of frequency response, THD and signal-to-noise ratio; this can be found anywhere. Commonplace facts have been ruthlessly omitted where their absence makes room for something new or unusual, so this is not the place to start learning electronics from scratch. Mathematics has been confined to a few simple equations determining vital parameters such as open-loop gain; anything more complex is best left to a circuit simulator you trust. Your assumptions, and hence the output,...
