tpa6120 New TI High Quality Headphone Amp

From the specs that little el cheapo amp looks like a real winner!
Awesome SNR!
🙄

I think I have to order samples right away...
/M

This is indeed a killer chip. May even be a good choice for a preamp to drive long cables.

But what's this statement in the data sheet:

Quote: " The second feature is current-on-demand
at the output that enables the amplifier to respond
quickly and linearly when necessary without risk of output distortion. When large amounts of output
power are suddenly needed, the amplifier can respond
extremely quickly without raising the noise floor of the system and degrading the signal-to-noise" End quote.

Didn't we call this class (A)B??
ANOTHER Marketing Hijack??

Jan Didden

janneman said:

Didn't we call this class (A)B??
ANOTHER Marketing Hijack??

Jan Didden

Click to expand...

not sure but it may be another name for high slew rate. yeah, more marketing than anything else.

There's an ongoing builders thread at head-fi.org. Check it out🙂


/U.

This is clearly a nice chip, but before getting too excited, note that the ultra-low distortion figure quoted on the first page of the datasheet is into a 1k-ohm load. When you look at the diostortion vs. freq graphs a few pages further along the data for 32-64-ohm loads typical of many headphones is still very good but not beyond what can be achieved with an opamp driving a couple of external output devices or beyond what can be done with a discrete circuit. It is however a very compact, very good single package device. I would like to see this used on soundcards as the headphone outputs typically suck. It is probably the best single component headphone amp in town.

A rather novel application for a DIYer would be to figure out how use it to drive a pair of MOSFETs for a compact but high quality 50-100W power amp.

sam9 said:

A rather novel application for a DIYer would be to figure out how use it to drive a pair of MOSFETs for a compact but high quality 50-100W power amp.

Click to expand...

I was thinking about that as well. It would make an awesome amp with its huge slew rate and low distortion.

Unfortunately, the supply voltage isn't high enough.

Anyway, I am wondering why there aren't as many currend-feedback discrete power amps out there.