| Electronics > Beginners |
| why is class A audio amp saturating? |
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| d4n13l:
Hi, Sorry I don't have much free time so I moved to more practical amps, I made a class AB that is simple and works great. My only remaining questions are: are class A amps still used today? if so, could you give examples of where are preferable and is just because people prefere to waste lots of power in exchange for the low distortion or there is some other reason? |
| magic:
Mostly still used when people want to burn lots of power in exchange for lower distortion. Or to get acceptable performance from oddball 3-transistor topologies like below :) http://www.firstwatt.com/prod.html |
| fourfathom:
--- Quote from: magic on August 17, 2019, 05:51:01 am ---Mostly still used when people want to burn lots of power in exchange for lower distortion. --- End quote --- Or different distortion. Some guitar amps use Class-A (tube / transformer output stage) because when overdriven the harmonics are mostly even harmonics (due to asymmetrical clipping). This sounds "sweeter" than the odd-harmonic symmetrical clipping of a push-pull circuit. |
| Calvin:
Hi, almost all discrete built lowlevel and linelevel audio (pre-)amps are biased in class-A. Its just that the number of class-A biased power amps is rather small and mostly restricted to the socalled Highend scene, where the emotional experience counts not figures and numbers. It can still be found quite often among tube amps, i.e. singleended Triode amps with typically less than 10W of output power. Especially those simple SE Triodes (some even without global feedback) can perform on a level other amps aren´t capable of .... it may not be perfect in a HiFi sense, but can be a more envolving emotional experience. They´re often combined with off mainstream speaker systems like efficient fullrangers or electrostats. They are certainly specialty amps for a niche of users, no mass-market devices. jau Calvin |
| Zero999:
--- Quote from: d4n13l on August 16, 2019, 11:56:47 pm ---Hi, Sorry I don't have much free time so I moved to more practical amps, I made a class AB that is simple and works great. My only remaining questions are: are class A amps still used today? if so, could you give examples of where are preferable and is just because people prefere to waste lots of power in exchange for the low distortion or there is some other reason? --- End quote --- The only application of class A is for low power voltage gain stages, for example all op-amp input stages are class A. Class A power amplifiers are of no practical use, but ome people like them because they believe they sound better or are interested in old designs. For completeness here's an LTSpice simulation of the current sink, with the component values optimised. |
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