Amplifier Design Book

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Pixie,

You can try these:

Designing Power Amplifiers - stephen Kamichik - Simple and with some pratic;

Valve and Transistor Audio Amplifiers - John Linsley Hood - If you like tube sound;

Audio Power Transistor Design Handbook - Douglas Self - Very good book in my opinion;

High Power Audio Amplifier Design handbook - G. randy Slone - Very good book with projects and PCB pictures.

You can buy all of them at Amazon or Old Colony Lab Sound.

Regards
 
While not a specialized amplifier book, "The Art of Electronics" by Horowitz and Hill covers just about anything you need. Anyone working with these amplifiers should own a copy of this book. It will help you understand more about each of the circuits used in the amplifier, providing a good foundation for the specialized knowledge from the other books.
 
need some help

Can anyone help me with with some online documentation on how to build an stereo amplifier (4X100w or more )? I don't want books, but multimedia informations.
I'm interested in sites , files in any format ,etc... that presents basic concepts, schematics,etc...I have discovered some but i need more info.
You can send me the info on my email:glodanr@email.ro
 
I just finished reading J.L. Hood's "Valve and Transistor Audio Amplifiers" two days ago and I would like to give it my highest regards and suggest it to everyone.

First I bought the D. Self book then R. Sloan book, but to me they are valuable as information source on minimising THD, calculating power supply etc. but both of them stick too much to one well known amp layout and both disregard the listening impression totally. After all, listening to music is a reason to build an amp in the first place...

JL Hood's book gives you an overview of different schematics, topologies and ideas both old and new and so gives a much better idea of the general picture. He's is a first book on the subject where author knows and accepts that there are differences between amps and even capacitors etc.....



Ergo
 
Agreed

Originally posted by Jens





Highly recommended (must have): Allen Wright's "The Tube Preamp CookBook" - www.vacuumstate.com







Jens












Agreed, Jens,











I know Allen's book very thoroughly; it gives a very good insight into design philosphy. Allen explains how and why. This is rare.










However, if we are talking about valve amps, I would not like to miss:





Morgan Jones, Valve Amplifiers. 2nd ed., Newnes1999





Langford-Smith, Radiotron Designer's Handbook, 4ed. 1953, 1498pp (!), the bible





Valley & Wallman, Vacuum Tube Amplifiers, Mcgraw-Hill 1948, advanced bible











and for those able to read German,





Tietze-Schenk, Halbleiter-Schaltungstechnik, newest ed.




("Art of Electronics" is questionable from the didactic point of view ;not my opinion only, in German I would prefer the Tietze-Schenk),




valves again,




Barkhausen, Lehrbuch der Elektronenröhren in 4 Bänden, (1sted.1929, 4th ed.1960)





D.Ing.F.Bergtold, whatever you get your hands on: e.g. Röhrenbuch 1936. ( The author explains how directly heated tubes differ technically from indirectly heated ones and why the directly heated critters work more linear!)






Hint for anything possible with operational amplifiers:





Stout & Kaufman, Handbook of Operational Amplifier Circuit Design, McGraw-Hill, 1976. This indeed is a cookbook. You want to build an op-amp shunt regulator? it is in it, with all needed equations and eventualites.









'Nuf for now.




Greets,
 
I'll weigh in with my old and brittle copy of "Understanding
Hi-Fi Circuits", a collection of tube arcana by the late, great
Norman Crowhurst. Probably very difficult to find, but a
good sourcebook for designing tube amplifiers.

I'd be lost without my copy, assuming I ever scrape up enough
spare cash to buy some output transformers and finish building
my very first tube amplifier project. Got a half-built chassis
awaiting the money, parts and inspiration.
 
Another great book

A book, from which I learned a lot and understood better what is going on in an opamp or a discrete design, is also German, from former East Germany:
"Dostal: Operationsverstaerker"
There is one whole long chapter in the book on how to do it right with the high frequency compensation, which is incredible. When you read it, you know, that Douglas Self does it wrong and Leach does it much better.

To make things clear: this is a book about the _internal_ design of opamps, and _not_ about building amps using perfect opamp blocks.

regards,
Hartmut
 
Believe it or not I consider the ARRL Handbook for Radio Amateurs to be a bit of a bible when it comes to in-depth electronic circuit theory and detailed implementation. It doesn't provide audio circuits but the know-how has certainly been essential to my power amp design efforts.

My perspective on the sort of info that's out there is as follows (simplified and perhaps controversial):

level 1: sounds ok and doesn't explode
Basic electronics textbooks liike Horowitz and Hill. Device mfrs' application notes. Kits like those from Maplin UK. Most DIY projects published in magazines and on the web. Solid-state amp modules or amp ICs.

level 2: sound rivals mainstream commercial amps like Sony, NAD, Arcam, etc.
Specialist amp books, Doug Self website, some publications like Hood, most Pass stuff, good DIY copies of high-end designs, valve kits with good transformers. Stuff from academic institutions.

level 3: audiophile: sound demonstrably rivals Krell, Mark Levinson, Audio Research, Naim, etc.
Almost no info available that I can find.

I have had to teach myself how to get beyond level 2 and it is a hard and steep road. The sort of info that seems lacking is stuff like: what to measure, how to measure it and how to relate measurements to sonic chracteristiscs. What measurement equipment is needed? What sort, how much and why to use feedback? Dynamic stability and signal tracking accuracy. How to select cricital components such as output transistors and how to tune/match their characteristics in a real circuit.

If anyone can direct me to level 3 info I'd be most grateful. :cool:
 
Harmut:

Is this the English version of the book you mentioned?

J. Dostal, Operational Amplifiers 2d Ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, 1993, ISBN 0-7506-9317-7.

If so, I agree with you! Walt Jung (op amp guru) say this book is "One of the best op-amp books currently available, with good technical analyses and discussions on basic and applied circuits."

Here is an Amazon link

It's expensive but worth it.

Michael
 
Just my two (Euro) cents ;),

A few years ago, a friend told me some kind words about "Microelectronic circuits", 4th edition, by Sedra/Smith, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-511690-9.

Not quite related to the thread's subject, but provides deep insights on basic bricks of amplifiers (diff pairs, feedback networks), with solved problems. Furthermore, it also makes a large use of MosFets and Jfets, which I have not found to be so frequent in electronics books...

Cheers,
 
mlloyd1 said:

Is this the English version of the book you mentioned?

J. Dostal, Operational Amplifiers 2d Ed., Butterworth-Heinemann, 1993, ISBN 0-7506-9317-7.

If so, I agree with you! Walt Jung (op amp guru) say this book is "One of the best op-amp books currently available, with good technical analyses and discussions on basic and applied circuits."

It's expensive but worth it.

it seems to be that book. I found it when I searched material for amplifier design 10 years ago in the big Siemens company library in Munich/Germany.

100 USD is really expensive, though !

Another good reading is Motchenbacher/Fitchen on "Low Noise electronics". After reading you know how to do moving coil stages in preamps.

There are some interesting books on FETs, too, like the Evans/Siliconix book.

If you want state of the art schematics, you have to pay for an expensive subscription of the big Japanese hi-end electronic DIY magazine "MJ - Musen to Jikken". About 250 USD costs a year with 12 issues.
I found there the ML333 schematic, but without resistor values. Horrifying, really ;-))

regards,
Hartmut
 
ftorres said:
Just my two (Euro) cents ;),

A few years ago, a friend told me some kind words about "Microelectronic circuits", 4th edition, by Sedra/Smith, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-511690-9.

Not quite related to the thread's subject, but provides deep insights on basic bricks of amplifiers (diff pairs, feedback networks), with solved problems. Furthermore, it also makes a large use of MosFets and Jfets, which I have not found to be so frequent in electronics books...

Cheers,

We used the 3rd edition for basically an intro to ideal opamps and transistor circuits at U of AZ. I recall it as being my favorite ECE textbook. (We often got stuck using a textbook written by one of the professors.) It covers the operation of the big three: BJT, MOSFET and JFET quite well. I only wish I had taken the second semester which began to get into amplifier circuits. (Being a CompE I probably took a software class instead.) Highly recommended if you want to know transistor basics and some of the building blocks of amplifiers, but it's not going to go into any detail on how to build a practical audio amplifier.

Having just received Douglas Self's Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook and read just the first chapter last night, I'm a little depressed. So far the impression I've got seems to be that as long as you have an amplifier of very little distortion (like what is promised in the blameless amp later in the book) that there shouldn't really be any audible difference between amps. My initial reasoning from this is "why bother to build an amp if I can just go buy the cheapest amp with good THD specs and have no audible difference to something I build." This takes away the reason I bought the book, to be able to design and build a superior sounding amp. I'll have to read a few more chapters and see if my initial impression changes or not.
 
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