As we’ve traced our no-nonsense path through the world of Hi-Fi audio, we’ve started with the listener, understood the limitations of the human ear, and thence proceeded to the loudspeaker. We’ve ...

One of the more common building blocks of a voltage controlled amplifier (VCA) is a differential pair amplifier. For a VCA configuration, the (top) two bases receive a control voltage for gain control ...

A critical measure for all audio components is distortion, typically specified as total harmonic distortion (THD) or total harmonic distortion + noise (THD+N). THD is defined as: ... THD+N is the rms ...

This is an excerpt from “Self on Audio,” by Douglas Self, used with permission from Newnes Publishers, a division of Elsevier. For many years I felt that the output stages of power amplifiers ...

In communications, unwanted frequencies that are generated as multiples of the original frequency due to irregularities in the transmission line. In audio amplifiers, harmonic distortion comes from ...

Input crossover distortion has long been the bane of rail-to-rail op amps. The input stage for most R-R amps consists of p-and n-channel differential pairs (Fig. 1a). The result is that the stage's ...

We all know what distortion sounds like. We’ve heard it in heavy metal tunes, cheap iPod docks and the crummy speakers at Taco Bell drive-thrus. And we’ve all read distortion specs on things like ...

More often than not we see folks on our forums and other forum websites debating how powerful a particular amplifier or receiver is based upon a single test popularized by many print magazines and ...

Understanding the causes, similarities, and differences between current and voltage distortion will help you pinpoint most power quality problems. When a writer or speaker mentions harmonic distortion ...