Transistor Calculations

[codeboy2k]

You're welcome!

Amplifier design is much trickier, but easy to accomplish when you start to understand all the different variables involved.

These days, with the ubiquity of the op-amp, it's almost a lost art. 

I still love designing wide-band amplifier front ends for ADC's using discrete parts, but you can get anything you need with very wide bandwidths in op amps now.  It's not worth the trouble anymore, especially if time to market is a deciding factor.

I do it only to keep my head from going rusty, but in a final design I will almost always use op-amps, as much as I can.

[Mint.]

You're welcome!

Amplifier design is much trickier, but easy to accomplish when you start to understand all the different variables involved.

These days, with the ubiquity of the op-amp, it's almost a lost art. 

I still love designing wide-band amplifier front ends for ADC's using discrete parts, but you can get anything you need with very wide bandwidths in op amps now.  It's not worth the trouble anymore, especially if time to market is a deciding factor.

I do it only to keep my head from going rusty, but in a final design I will almost always use op-amps, as much as I can.

I agree with you, every time I type in amplifier tutorial or something similar its all op amps and no transistors. With this being the case I feel that I have finally gotten a good understanding of transistor switches but not amplifiers. There really are minimal resources to learn about transistor amps and I have watched countless videos, read articles and blogs. Yet its still not clicking for me as many of them only state the facts that a transistor can amplify and blah blah blah, but there is no/minimal amount of maths and calculations that are presented. I mean of course stating the facts is great it gives me an introduction, but its not very practical is it when you actually begin to design a transistor amp.

[KTP]

I agree with you, every time I type in amplifier tutorial or something similar its all op amps and no transistors. With this being the case I feel that I have finally gotten a good understanding of transistor switches but not amplifiers. There really are minimal resources to learn about transistor amps and I have watched countless videos, read articles and blogs. Yet its still not clicking for me as many of them only state the facts that a transistor can amplify and blah blah blah, but there is no/minimal amount of maths and calculations that are presented. I mean of course stating the facts is great it gives me an introduction, but its not very practical is it when you actually begin to design a transistor amp.

I had the most fun in a EE class where we had to design and build an op-amp using discrete transistors (were allowed to used matched pair packages for current mirrors and such inside the design.  Learned a lot.  The LTspice simulation I did was amazingly close to the final end product.