Many know I set out to build a really good amp. Well after all that I found it can't work. The drawing was on the bench and I saw the problem immediately, at a glance. Damn.
But I did find it. Now it needs power MOSFETs for outputs. This looks pretty much non-negotiable.
I forget which is which but they are all the same. Al either ?N channel or P channel. The difference it the power supply. Which is easier to design, but what if the better choice need negative, ? Then I draw it upside down, so what ?
nd it can't work. The drawing was on the bench and I saw the problem immedi ately, at a glance. Damn.
tty much non-negotiable.
r P channel. The difference it the power supply. Which is easier to design, but what if the better choice need negative, ? Then I draw it upside down, so what ?
One way of making a decent class-AB audio output stage used complementary p airs of power FET - a P-channel device with it's source tied to the positiv e rail, and and N-channel device with it's source tied to the negative rail .
You use bipolar transistors to monitor the current being fed into the speak ers and generated the gate drives for the power MOSFETs. The tricky bit is keeping both MOS-FETs just on when the output is half-way between the rails . People like Douglas Self have written reams on the subject.
Buy one of his books, or one of his amplifiers. The amplifier will work bet ter than anything you can build for yourself, and by the time you've blown up a few big power MOSFET's it will also turn out to be the cheaper option.
If you are very lucky, Phil Allison will chip in here. He won't be polite b ut his well-informed.
The problem is not well specified. "Good amp" is not very clear.
Class-D amps are simple and efficient. I'm designing one right now.
Most mosfets are designed for switching and don't take kindly to linear operation, way out there on their SOAR curve. They tend to blow up at some fraction of their rated power dissipation; bipolars do that too.
We learned about that.
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John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc
Science teaches us to doubt.
Claude Bernard
Here's a crazy idea... ( idea stolen from a linear power supply with stepped taps on the transformer.) How about a linear amp (inner loop) with some switched power supply rails... ? It would probably be ugly. George H.
Instead of going straight for 140V/18A try your ideas first as a headphone amp then you can use little TO-92 fets in white proto-board and each burnout only wastes cents?
Or just a 50 watt amp. That requires what, about +/- 35 volt rails to deliver 20 VRMS into an 8 ohm load.
Differential input stage feeding a bootstrap VAS followed by a 2N3055 Darlington and a 2N3055 Sziklai to make a PNP is a classic. 8 transistors if you use a current source for the input pair.
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