As an owner of direct drive electrostatic speakers/amps as well as Hypex NCore amps which I think are pretty great, I'm curious whether Class D would be a good choice if one wanted to develop an amplifier to directly drive an electrostatic speaker panel at around 5000v. I'm interested in developing/experimenting with contemporary direct drive amps for electrostatic panels.
If you switch at low voltage and step up with a HV trafo I don't see why that can't work. Who says you can't switch HV just because it is HV? Sure, you may not want to do it because of the massive EMI and RFI emission but that is different than it can't be done. Nano second switch speeds are achievable at kV levels with special circuits like thyratrons, spark gaps, massive series transistor banks etc. for lasers all the time.
I found this recently: IEEE Xplore Abstract - High-voltage class-D direct-drive audio amplifier for electrostatic loudspeakers
It seems people are exploring this idea to a greater degree than I... Hopefully something comes of it.
It seems people are exploring this idea to a greater degree than I... Hopefully something comes of it.
Yes not quite the 5000v that my Acoustat servos deliver. I'm not an expert enough to know how one would design in order to increase the voltage -- perhaps a series of gain stages. The Acoustats use a voltage doubler which is a fairly simple thing to implement if you know what you're doing.
Really? You think so? It was common for radio amateurs to run 30, 50 and even 144 megahertz transmitters on kiloVolt supplies 40-50 years ago. Is that a "lost art" now?
Some people had similar ideas quite a long time ago.... 😀
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/93434-proposition-class-d-esls-perfect-match.html
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/class-d/93434-proposition-class-d-esls-perfect-match.html
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