Circuit Project: Small Audio Amplifiers Using LM386 and NE5534

Posted on Feb 7, 2014

About one Watt RMS seems to be a convenient size, and this is also about the highest power that a simple amplifier fed from 12V can put into an 8 Ohm speaker. A very low saturation amplifier may go as high up as 2 Watt, but any higher power requires the use of a higher voltage power supply, lower speaker impedance, a bridge circuit, or a combination of those. During my many

Circuit Project: Small Audio Amplifiers Using LM386 and NE5534

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years building electronic things I have needed small audio amps many times, and have pretty much standardized on a few IC solutions, first and and foremost the LM386, which is small, cheap, and very easy to use. But it does not produce high quality audio For many applications, the advantages weigh more than the distortion and noise of this chip, so that I used it anyway. In other cases I used different chips, which perform better but need more complex circuits. Often these chips were no longer available the next time I needed a small amplifier. When I last upgraded my computer, I replaced the old and trusty Soundblaster AWE 32 by a Soundblaster Audigy. The new card is better in many regards, but while the old one had an internal audio power amplifier, the new one doesn`t! That`s bad news, because I have some pretty decent speakers for the PC, which are fully passive. So, I built a little stereo amp using two LM386 chips and installed it inside the computer, fed by the 12V available internally. But then I wasn`t satisfied. The LM386 might be suitable for communication quality audio, which is roughly the fidelity you get over a telephone, but for music it`s pretty poor! The distortion was awful. So, the day came when I decided to play a little more scientifically with small audio amps, looking for a way to get good performance with simple and inexpensive means. I set up a test bench with a sine wave oscillator running at 1...

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