Designing An Opamp Headphone Amplifier
Low and high pass filters can be cascaded at the input, so long as the resistor values of each filter are different by at least a factor of 10. Also, the impedance of input network will affect the overall impedance of the input stage, so must be accounted for in selecting filter resistance values. These bandpass filters can alternatively be incorporated into the feedback loop. The circuit in figure 8 has an approximate bandpass from 2Hz to 150kHz. Some audiophiles may be able to hear distortion from capacitors in the signal path. As with opamp distortion, capacitor distortion is not audible to everyone. Before discarding the benefits, audition the amp on a protoboard with and without the capacitors.
THE OUTPUT STAGE
Voltage-gain opamps may output enough current to drive some headphones directly (check the manufacturer specs). For example, the author built a pocket headphone amp (shown above) with Burr-Brown OPA132 opamps in a non-inverting configuration as shown in figure 5. The amp has no trouble reaching ear-splitting volumes with most headphones. Modern dynamic headphones will play loudly with just a few milliwatts.
However, when an opamp does not have enough current capability or if it is susceptible to output loading errors (for information on output loading errors, see the section on selecting opamps above), it must then be augmented by an output stage. This section reviews solid state and tube class A followers, class AB symmetric emitter followers and buffer opamps (which are nothing more than elaborate emitter followers) as output stages. For tube amp-block front-ends, there is a discussion on interfacing tubes to solid state output stages. Note: the class A followers and high current buffers described below also make excellent standalone headphone amplifiers, where voltage gain is not necessary.
Class A MOSFET Follower
Figure 9
Keywords :
Opamp,
Operational Amplifier,
Headphone,
P-amp,
Configuring,
Opamps,
For,
Voltage,
Gain
Writer : delon |
27 Feb 2011 Mon
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