Self on Audio, 3rd Edition

Chapter 25Distortion in power amplifiers

Part IV: the power amplifier stages (Electronics World, November 1993)

This article tackled the difficult subject of output stage design. It began, in Figure 25.1, with a demonstration of something that was dimly understood at the time but is now considered conventional wisdom—the fact that the distortion generated by Class-AB is relatively as bad in its harmonic structure as crossover distortion, and the best thing that can be said about it is that does not (unlike crossover distortion) occur at all output levels. The spectrum analysis was done with a huge Hewlett-Packard instrument on a trolley that was normally used for EMC RF measurements. My current digital scope can do all that for itself; of such ...