after looking at all kinds of headphone amplifier circuits and even building few i found this one:
which i thought should work well but it had a bunch of issues including unequal clipping way too high gain and a few other issues, so i decided to put it in LT spice and change up few things and i got this:
this design works slightly better but still has a lot of issues, i tried simulating it with diffrent loads and thats why the 8 ohm load in the picture.
which i thought should work well but it had a bunch of issues including unequal clipping way too high gain and a few other issues, so i decided to put it in LT spice and change up few things and i got this:
this design works slightly better but still has a lot of issues, i tried simulating it with diffrent loads and thats why the 8 ohm load in the picture.
If you're really going to apply 2.8V peak-to-trough sine wave inputs, and if you're really going to operate from a single ended (12V, GND) power supply, then the ratio (R6 / R3) might be too large
But then i get unequal clipping which ends with the conclusion that more transistors are needed.
You're the designer, if you no longer have confidence in the design, then a sensible conclusion would be to abandon that design and start again with a fresh new idea.
Suggestions:
First, experiment with R3 and/or R6, those influence the gain. If the signal gets distorted, change R4 and/or R5.
Focus on a realistic headphones impedance range, like 32 to 80 ohm.
the issue is that more and more headphones/iems are 8 ohm 16 ohm 24 ohm and modern dongles are struggling to drive them
