Audio Project Amplifier Speaker Loudspeaker Kit
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AC coupling - Click HERE for Original Thread
brsanko
how do I know what size caps to use for AC coupling
Lars Clausen
Hi

It would depend on the impedance of the following stage, and your lowest frequency of interest.

An example, if you have a DC input impedance of say 100k, and Flow of 10 Hz, you need a capacitor of:

1 / (100000 * 10 * 6.28) F = 0.000000159 F = 159 nF

Recalculate according to your particular values
brsanko
thank you that was just the formula I needed I've been reading Bruce Rosenblitz's book and while it's a great book there were a few details that were just left out
Lars Clausen
I can give you a little bit of additional advice, calculate for the lowest acceptable frequency, not the highest.

So if your speakers fall off at say 30 Hz, but your input DC spike you want to remove has a frequency of 2 Hz, you should settle for 5 Hz rather than 25 Hz. Just to preserve as much of the low frequency phase accuracy as possible...
brsanko
ok I'm really new to this so what would cause a DC spike and how would I know about it
Lars Clausen
It could be from switching on the preceding apparatus, usually this could result in a DC spike, in other cases it could be normal thermal drift, in the latter case the frequencies would usually be very low, like 0.2 Hz.
In the switching on case, the f requency ddepends on the time it takes to charge the PS capacitors, and that in turn depends on the size of caps, and the power capability of the charging transformer.
ShiFtY
I ususally just go with old circuits- they used plenty of 0.22uF and 0.47uF in the mullard/RCA manuals, so they must be pretty decent values...

DC thumps are pretty rare, unless your power supply is on the edge of oscillation. Not much of a worry IMHO :)

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