Hi!
I'm a young person with some kind of anxiety disorder. To keep the ghosts in my head in order, I have to keep my thoughts more or less occupied with some sort of project. Having nothing occupying my mind causes anxiety of different kinds and intensity. Enough about that.
I've just finished refurbishing an old turntable and I'm now looking for a new project to tackle. Preferably one relating to my love of music. I've been thinking of building some sort of class D/tube hybrid amplifier. But I don't know where to start. Are there any examples of such a machine that I could study? I've been looking around these forums but I haven't really found anything.
I have soldering and metalworking skills, and basic knowledge of how electronics work. I do not, however, have any experience with how amplifiers operate or are constructed. Is such a project feasible? Could anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks so very much in advance and looking forward to learning a lot more.
Best regards,
J
I'm a young person with some kind of anxiety disorder. To keep the ghosts in my head in order, I have to keep my thoughts more or less occupied with some sort of project. Having nothing occupying my mind causes anxiety of different kinds and intensity. Enough about that.
I've just finished refurbishing an old turntable and I'm now looking for a new project to tackle. Preferably one relating to my love of music. I've been thinking of building some sort of class D/tube hybrid amplifier. But I don't know where to start. Are there any examples of such a machine that I could study? I've been looking around these forums but I haven't really found anything.
I have soldering and metalworking skills, and basic knowledge of how electronics work. I do not, however, have any experience with how amplifiers operate or are constructed. Is such a project feasible? Could anyone point me in the right direction?
Thanks so very much in advance and looking forward to learning a lot more.
Best regards,
J
class D is okay.but for tubes i can only recommend low voltage tubes..what did you want for the tubes as?.a pre-amplifier or just a buffer?.
for the class D amp, there's many kits available especially here 🙂 .please remember, the key of good audio is a good PSU.
for the class D amp, there's many kits available especially here 🙂 .please remember, the key of good audio is a good PSU.
Thank you so very much for your reply!
What are the advantages and disadvantages to using the tubes as a pre-amplifier versus as a buffer? In my mind I was picturing it as a pre-amplifier, but maybe using it as a buffer is better?
What is the key to a good power supply? 🙂
I was thinking of constructing it as a dual-mono combined tube/class D amplifier in a single case. How does this look? Extremely basic.
Code:
Input >> Tube pre-amplifier/buffer >> Class D amplifier >> Output/Speakers
Class D and tubes both have (different) sound quality issues. Either one on their own is a matter of taste/opinion, but if you combine them you're going to offend everyone 😉 Tubes and class D also have extra build difficulties that make them not particularly suitable for a first project.
I would suggest you consider doing the following in order:
- build a chip amp kit, e.g. LM3886 based (easy, gives a good clean 50W)
- build your tube preamp and use it with the LM3886 to add a bit of distortion
- build the class D to replace the LM3886 and have loads of power
By the time you get to the latter stages, the experience in building the earlier ones will have been valuable. And you might decide you want to go for higher quality and build a discrete BJT amp instead.
I would suggest you consider doing the following in order:
- build a chip amp kit, e.g. LM3886 based (easy, gives a good clean 50W)
- build your tube preamp and use it with the LM3886 to add a bit of distortion
- build the class D to replace the LM3886 and have loads of power
By the time you get to the latter stages, the experience in building the earlier ones will have been valuable. And you might decide you want to go for higher quality and build a discrete BJT amp instead.
Thanks for your reply!
I see, hehe. Is the dual-mono kit from https://chipamp.com/ good enough? 🙂 Could I connect any tube pre-amp to these and have it work?
I designed a class d / tube front end hybrid a few years back.
I used an ECC83 front end in SRPP mode.
I used a irs2092 based class d amplifier on the back end.
It worked pretty well.
The 2092 probably isn't recommended for beginners unless you take the application note and use their pcb layout. PCB layout and decoupling is vital for it to work properly.
I used +/- 50 volt rails for the class d amplifier and also used these for 100 volts for the tube.
I used an ECC83 front end in SRPP mode.
I used a irs2092 based class d amplifier on the back end.
It worked pretty well.
The 2092 probably isn't recommended for beginners unless you take the application note and use their pcb layout. PCB layout and decoupling is vital for it to work properly.
I used +/- 50 volt rails for the class d amplifier and also used these for 100 volts for the tube.
I'm not familiar with the chipamp.com kits but a lot of people here seem to build them so they can't be too bad.
Your amp will have a generic line in, which should be usable with any unbalanced line-level source like CD players, PCs, etc. Since you rebuilt a phono and you're keen to build something with tubes, I would suggest a tube-based RIAA phono preamp would be a good thing. It's about as good a use of tubes as you can find IMHO.
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