280 Watt MOSFET Power Amplifier


Posted on Sep 25, 2012

This amplifier is designed to be as flexible as possible, with no bad habits. Indeed, it will operate stably with supply voltages as low as +/-5V (completely pointless, but interesting), all the way to the maximum supply voltage of +/-70V. The only change that is needed is to trim the MOSFET bias pot! With the full supply voltage of +/-70V (which must not be exceeded!), RMS power is around 180W into 8 ohms, or 250W into 4ohms. Short term (or `music`) power is typically about 240W into 8 ohms and 380W into 4 ohms. Note that depends to a very great degree on the power supply, and a very robust supply is an absolute requirement for the maximum output.


280 Watt MOSFET Power Amplifier
Click here to download the full size of the above Circuit.

In general, unless you really need the maximum possible power, I suggest that you limit the supply voltage to ±56V using a 40+40V transformer. You will get around 150W into 8 ohms from this supply voltage (short-term), but you also relax the demands placed on the MOSFETs and heatsinks. Since this amp probably has more power than you will normally ever need, even if you do skimp a little on the transformer, the loss will be very small. In particular, the distortion figures show that amp loading causes only very small variations, with any harmonics being predominantly from my audio oscillator. There are no visible or audible high order components to the distortion waveform. Output impedance was measured on a fully built amplifier, including the internal wiring. This entails around 200mm of wire in all (per channel), so the output impedance of the amplifier itself is obviously lower than quoted. For an 8 ohm load, the damping factor at 1kHz is around 800 (8 / 10 milliohms) - completely pointless of course, since any speaker lead will ruin that very quickly. Noise was measured with inputs open-circuited, and at -54dBV may not look too wonderful, however this figure is very pessimistic. Remember that this is the unweighted measurement, with bandwidth extending to well in excess of 100kHz. Even so, signal to noise ratio (referred to full power) is 86dB unweighted, and the amp is completely silent into typical speakers....




Leave Comment

characters left:

New Circuits

.

 


Popular Circuits

Solar Garden LED Lighting
Programmable-attenuator
Simple-window-detector
Telephone line monitors
the Poppet 500 milliwatt AM transmitter
Voltage-Controlled Oscillator
Closed loop speed control of DC motor using back emf sening
FM Transmission and Reception
Sub-Harmonic Bass Converter for Electric Guitars



Top