Designing Audio Power Amplifiers

This comprehensive book on audio power amplifier design will appeal to members of the professional audio engineering community as well as the student and enthusiast. Designing Audio Power Amplifiers begins with power amplifier design basics that a novice can understand and moves all the way through to in-depth design techniques for very sophisticated audiophiles and professional audio power amplifiers. This book is the single best source of knowledge for anyone who wishes to design audio power amplifiers. It also provides a detailed introduction to nearly all aspects of analog circuit design, making it an effective educational text.

Develop and hone your audio amplifier design skills with in-depth coverage of these and other topics:

• Basic and advanced audio power amplifier design
• Low-noise amplifier design
• Static and dynamic crossover distortion demystified
• Understanding negative feedback and the controversy surrounding it
• Advanced NFB compensation techniques, including TPC and TMC
• Sophisticated DC servo design
• MOSFET power amplifiers and error correction
• Audio measurements and instrumentation
• Overlooked sources of distortion
• SPICE simulation for audio amplifiers, including a tutorial on LTspice
• SPICE transistor modeling, including the VDMOS model for power MOSFETs
• Thermal design and the use of ThermalTrak™ transistors
• Four chapters on class D amplifiers, including measurement techniques
• Professional power amplifiers
• Switch-mode power supplies (SMPS).

Bob Cordell is an electrical engineer who has been deeply involved in audio since his adventures with vacuum tube designs in his teen years. He is an equal-opportunity designer to this day, having built amplifiers with vacuum tubes, bipolar transistors and MOSFETs. Bob is also a prolific designer of audio test equipment, including a high-performance THD analyzer and many purpose-built pieces of audio gear. He has published numerous articles and papers on power amplifier design and distortion measurement in the popular press and in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society. In 1983 he published a power amplifier design combining vertical power MOSFETs with error correction, achieving unprecedented distortion levels of less than 0.001% at 20 kHz. He also consults in the audio and semiconductor industries.

Bob is also an avid DIY loudspeaker builder, and has combined this endeavor with his electronic interests in the design of powered audiophile loudspeaker systems. Bob and his colleagues have presented audiophile listening and measurement workshops at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest and the Home Entertainment Show.

As an Electrical Engineer, Bob has worked at Bell Laboratories and other related telecommunications companies, where his work has included design of integrated circuits and fiber optic communications systems. Bob maintains an audiophile website at www.cordellaudio.com where diverse material on audio electronics, loudspeakers and instrumentation can be found.