Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook

This is a practical manual for the design of audio power amplifiers, aimed at both professionals and students. The book includes discussion on power supplies and power supply rejection; FET power amplifiers; the thermal dynamics of power amplifiers; and testing and safety.

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This is a uniquely detailed guide to the theory and practice of audio power amplifiers, from the elegantly simple mathematics of the differential pair to the practicalities of bolting down power transistors without breaking them. Based on a large body of original research and twenty years of experience, this work provides the first authoritative exposition of power amplifier design and operation. It shows that much of the conventional wisdom is quite wrong, and supplies practical solutions to many intractable design problems.



Douglas Self has compiled a handbook for professional designers, amateur enthusiasts, academic investigators and students. This work is the first of its kind in the audio amplifier field, and has become the standard against which other works will be measured. It provides a clear and practical text on the state of the art of amplifier design.

The book includes the first complete explanation of the sources of power amplifier distortion, shows how they can be eliminated or minimised, and gives detailed information allowing power amplifiers to be designed and constructed, with performance figures that would have been thought impossible a few years ago. It also includes an unusually detailed and lucid account of the operation of negative feedback in amplifiers, making it an excellent text for teaching as well as a key source for design engineers.

Douglas Self is Chief Design Engineer at Soundcraft Electronics, a major audio manufacturing company. While much of his time is spent designing professional analog mixing consoles, he has also been deeply involved with power amplifiers, DSP programming for digital audio, and just about every branch of audio electronics. His latest power amplifier design, for the Spirit branch of Soundcraft, has exceeded twenty thousand units sold world-wide; a strong validation of the design methods in this book!