Small Signal Audio Design, 2nd Edition, by Douglas Self

September 1 2014, 09:32
With ample coverage of preamplifiers and mixers and a new chapter on headphone amplifiers, Douglas Self’s new edition of Small Signal Audio Design provides an extensive repertoire of circuits that can be put together to make almost any type of audio system.

Small Signal Audio Design is a resource packed with valuable information. Virtually every page reveals nuggets of specialized knowledge not found elsewhere. Essential points of theory that bear on practical performance are lucidly and thoroughly explained, with the mathematics kept to a relative minimum. Self’s background in design for manufacture ensures he keeps a wary eye on the cost of things. The new book Includes a chapter on power-supplies, which is full of practical ways to keep both the ripple and the cost down, and shows how to power everything.

This book's new edition discusses how to use inexpensive and readily available parts to obtain state-of-the-art performance in all the vital parameters of noise, distortion, crosstalk, and so forth. With ample coverage of preamplifiers and mixers and a new chapter on headphone amplifiers, this practical handbook provides an extensive repertoire of circuits that can be put together to make almost any type of audio system.

Self wears his learning lightly, and this book features the engaging prose style familiar to readers of his other books. You will learn why mercury cables are not a good idea, the pitfalls of plating gold on copper, and what quotes from Star Trek have to do with PCB design.

Learn how to:
    •    Make amplifiers with apparently impossibly low noise
    •    Design discrete circuitry that can handle enormous signals with vanishingly low distortion
    •    Dse humble low-gain transistors to make an amplifier with an input impedance of more than 50 MΩ
    •    Transform the performance of low-cost-op-amps and how to make filters with very low noise and distortion
    •    Make incredibly accurate volume controls
    •    Make a variety of audio equalizers
    •    Make magnetic cartridge preamplifiers that have noise so low it is limited by basic physics
    •    Sum, switch, clip, compress, and route audio signals

The second edition is expanded throughout the book (with added information on new ADCs and DACs, microcontrollers, more coverage of discrete op-amp design, and many other topics), and includes a completely new chapter on headphone amplifiers.

Author Bio
Douglas Self studied engineering at Cambridge University, then psychoacoustics at Sussex University. He has spent many years working at the top level of design in both the professional audio and hi-fi industries, and has taken out a number of patents in the field of audio technology. He currently acts as a consultant engineer in the field of audio design.
www.focalpress.com | www.douglas-self.com
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