Bob Cordell's Power amplifier book

can you give me a typical value/range of this effective C for significant current ??

Thx-RNMarsh

If I've done my math right, a power transistor with 10 MHz ft and conducting just 1A will have a hybrid-pi capacitance of about 0.7uF.

The amount of suck-out current available limits the available rate-of-change of the transistor's current. At the same time, a fast signal going through the crossover region can have a fairly high current slewing rate. I think I touched on this aspect in Chapter 10 on output stages in my book.

Cheers,
Bob
 
This book is one of the best audio design book I have read, but it still exists some rooms for improvement.

Thanks for your kind words, Tom. And you are definitely right - there is a lot that can be improved, expanded, or added. That is my challenge for the Second Edition. I hope McGraw-Hill will allow me to add about 100 pages (but they were very kind to give me 600 pages in the first place, when the original plan was for only 500).

Cheers,
Bob
 
www.hifisonix.com
Joined 2003
Paid Member
Thanks for your kind words, Tom. And you are definitely right - there is a lot that can be improved, expanded, or added. That is my challenge for the Second Edition. I hope McGraw-Hill will allow me to add about 100 pages (but they were very kind to give me 600 pages in the first place, when the original plan was for only 500).

Cheers,
Bob

Bob, please take time out in your new edition to cover CFA's in some depth. Your unbiased, un-opinionated and practical writing style is a breath of fresh air. I for certain will buy the second edition to sit alongside my 1st.
 
Hi David,
I was writing my book at the time and was wrestling with the need to pull charge out of the power transistors to turn them off fast enough and mitigate dynamic crossover distortion. There is a section in my book where I discuss the problem...
I should have followed up on this idea. Indeed, there may be real-world practicalities that make it difficult to implement reliably.

Yes, the scheme looks like a nice solution to the problem, so when you did not publish it I wondered if you had found a difficulty and dropped it.
But now I am reassured, with Damir and Ovidiu as advocates and you too;)
I think I will use it, so thanks for the reply.

Best wishes
David
 
I am still wrestling along with design of
inverting voltage to current converting power amp
objectives
lead lag compensation
no current sources no current mirrors
"musical" harmonics' spectrum
the relations of harmonics should stay constant over power and frequency
thd absolute of minor concern
dynamic thermal compensation of bias

idea:
with current driven speakers one can easily compensate the motion equation B*l*i=...
with a set of three integrators and one adder and does not need to know the speaker's
TS parameters.
All that is required is a sine burst a good microphone and a two channel scope.
Then adjust the output fro minimum over- and undershoot of the bursts. ( of course that will be a compromise as the burst adjustments must be accomplished over a range of frequencies )

"Market": with the new but widely used program sources as "the net" and CDs LPs...are a niche market I think the days of passive crossovers are over. The future belongs to active speakers.
 
... lost to time, but here is a thread:

From a quick look at the start of the thread this seems rather different, a class A bias scheme.
In a Class B+ amp there will only be about 50mV across the combined output emitter resistors. That sure won't set the bias!
Perhaps somewhere in the 600+ posts is a scheme similar to Bob's but it doesn't jump out to me.

Best wishes
David.
 
From a quick look at the start of the thread this seems rather different, a class A bias scheme.
In a Class B+ amp there will only be about 50mV across the combined output emitter resistors. That sure won't set the bias!
Perhaps somewhere in the 600+ posts is a scheme similar to Bob's but it doesn't jump out to me.

Best wishes
David.

The Allison circuit is being used to drive the output tranistors; the outputs are biased in class AB, the drivers are biased in class A with an Allison configuration.

Even if they don't technically qualify as being an Allison configuration (who decides that?) they are both stabilized by the same rules, so I thought it would be helpful to have some reference material.
 
Member
Joined 2009
Paid Member
Bob, please take time out in your new edition to cover CFA's in some depth. Your unbiased, un-opinionated and practical writing style is a breath of fresh air. I for certain will buy the second edition to sit alongside my 1st.

I second that. I was reading it again yesterday and came away feeling again informed. Most importantly, it was nice to have information as opposed to just a series of opinions. I would also welcome some more info on common source output stages and more importantly, a more thorough practical exposition on the optimization of input LTPs. Thank you.
 
Moreover, so-called "CFAs" are generally single gain stage designs generating needlessely insufficient forward path gain and, therefore, insufficient major loop gain. Not good!

While I agree that what's found inside a casual CF IC opamp (which is mainly optimized for speed) is of little use for an audio amplifier, the issues can be adressed. Also it is possible to build two-stage CF amplifiers, with even better audio properties.

Samuel
 
Last edited:
www.hifisonix.com
Joined 2003
Paid Member
My Dear Lord, so much trolling here . . .

At least I have built both types. And listened to them and can comment from a position of working knowledge. We build audio stuff to enjoy the music, right?

CFA Amplifers
http://hifisonix.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/The-nx-Amplifer.pdf
http://hifisonix.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-sx-Amplifier.pdf

VFA Amplifiers:
http://hifisonix.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/The_e-Amp_V2.03.pdf
http://hifisonix.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Ovation-250.pdf

The CFA designs were the last ones I did out of curiosity more than anything. You can remain biased against CFA toplogy amps (but why?), but the practical results tell a very different story: they are easily a match for VFA designs.
 
While I agree that what's found inside a casual CF IC opamp (which is mainly optimized for speed) is of little use for an audio amplifier, the issues can be adressed. Also it is possible to build two-stage CF amplifiers, with even better audio properties.

Samuel

The few monolithic so-called "CFAs" that use two stages of gain also use minor loop compensation which loses the much vaunted "speed".

I fail to appreciate how and why the shortcomings of these miserable concoctions can be improved for audio.:(
 
Last edited: