Golden Earring wrote: > Hi Darren! > > I'm most interested to hear Arny's take on solid-state Class A with > regard to IM. I know that most recording studios use Class A amplifiers > in their monitoring chain. > >
The lowest distortion way to build the output stage of a solid state power amp is a carefully biased class AB. The trick is to come up with the right bias as a function of current and temperature. Needless to say this is far from being an insurmountable problem as long as you stay away from pure class B or pure class A. As with many things in life, the optimum is a carefully chosen mean or compromise. If you depart from the ideal too far in the direction of Class B you get crossover distortion which is especially bad sounding because it affects sound quality at all power levels. If you depart too far from the ideal in the direction of Class A you have a problem with what is called gm doubling. This is a fairly deep technical issue further elaborated on by Douglas Self in his various well-known publications related to power amp design and also 'Douglas-sel on SS power amps,' (http://douglas-self.com/ampins/dipa/dipa.htm#5) as well as 'Solid State amplifiers by teemu_kyttala_v1.0.pdf' (http://www.thatraymond.com/downloads/solidstate_guitar_amplifiers_teemu_kyttala_v1.0.pdf). I have personally observed and addressed this problem in my own unpublished power amp designs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ arnyk's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=64365 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=106914 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
