DIY 6 channel amp

[mazellan79]

Hello

This is my first post and I'm not sure if this is the right forum.

I'm designing a 6 channel 60W per channel car amp with I2C control of power and volume. It is configured as two stereo plus two subwoofer channels, each independently controllable. The unit is for a campervan and it is planned to have speakers in the front and rear independently controllable from a separate control module. I invite you to have a look and see if I have made any glaring errors, or if you have any suggestions for improvement.

Thanks
Mazellan

Amp1.png
Amp2.png
Amp3.png

[luka]

looks good, now with ~+/-32 you'll get more like 100w per channel, you need pretty good supply for this, also there will be a lot of heat, think of active cooling, 100% better... why don't you use something like ClassD chip amps, I think they are called something like TDA also?

[dangus]

My suggestion would be to build the control unit, but buy the amps. You can find good used amps cheaper than the parts to build one. $44 at a pawn shop got me a 4 channel RF, one that originally went for something like $600 in the '90s. Another $20 got me a vintage (but decent) Pioneer 2 channel (yard sale), and there was the $25 mono Kenwood sub amp (flea market).

I'll also suggest trying some lower power digital amps (like TA2024) as an option to minimize battery drain. That could be important if you're camped for a day or two with music playing. If there isn't road noise to overcome, a few watts may be plenty.

[ppia600]

I think he just wants to DIY like the name of our site, lol. He can use solar panels to supplement power and recharge things and also use battery isolators to seperate the audio battery from the main.

[mazellan79]

Thanks to all for replies.

It is part of a bigger project:
Power unit to control charging of the auxiliary battery, from solar, main battery and mains charger, and load control, the ability to shed non essential loads, and logging and display of battery state of charge.
Control unit that can communicate with the power unit and two matrix orbital lcd displays with keypads, temperature sensors for inside, outside, fridge and hot water, acceleration sensor for levelling, fresh water tank level , an ultra low power PC that will play music with MPXPlay under DOS and MPlayer/Meedio under XP for videos to a laptop screen, and whatever else I think of.

I considered Tripath digital amps but their quiescent current is too high, and I will be operating the campervan amps at low levels most of the time. The ability to switch the TDA7294s to standby is important.

As much as anything, this is an exercise in learning Eagle CAD and getting back into SMD design after a few years break. I was an Altium Designer (Protel) user since the DOS days. This will be the 4th version of my car MP3 player. The first, 8 years ago was an old 686 PC with MPXPlay, FreeDOS, and controlled via the joystick port. The amps were LM3886 and my own design SMPSs for PC and amplifiers.