Home built solid state 300W power amp

Home Technology

Gareth Branwyn is a freelance writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor to Boing Boing, Wink Books, and Wink Fun. His free weekly-ish maker tips newsletter can be found at garstipsandtools.com.

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@garethb2

August 14th, 2007

I know nothing about homebrewing audio gear, but this DIY 300W power amp, built on six LM3886 chips, sure looks bad ass. Here’s how the builder describes the project:

My design uses a PCB to hold 3 paralleled 3886s (i.e. PA150), and then I use the DRV134 to bridge 2 of the PA150 PCB boards. The function of DRV134 is to convert the un-balanced input signal to a balanced signal, so that the non-inverted signal is fed to one PA150, and the inverted signal is fed the another PA150. One of the PA150 is connected to the speaker’s positive input, and the other PA150 is connected to the speaker’s negative input. Because of this push-pull configuration, the total gain of the amplifier is doubled. Each PA150 has a gain of 20, so the gain of the BPA300 is 40.

DIY BPA300 GC – 300W 6x LM3886 bridged-paralleled power amplifier – [via] Link