Self on Audio, 2nd Edition

Introduction

This book is a collection of the articles I wrote for the journal Wireless World (now Electronics World) between the years 1979 and 1999. The vast majority of these deal with hi-fi preamplifiers and power amplifiers, and this book concentrates on this field.

In the last twenty-five years the scope of technology available to the audio designer has greatly widened. At the beginning of this period the only choice in preamp design was between discrete transistor stages and the relatively new op-amps. The latter had dubious characteristics as regards noise and distortion—particularly crossover distortion. This most unloved of audio defects was tolerated in power amplifiers because it had to be, but there was considerable resistance to incorporating ...