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In Reply to: RE: Total disconnect between price and quality posted by AbeCollins on April 14, 2015 at 22:35:31
IMHO Class D was meant to be cheap....
Class D was meant to be efficient.
I think it takes more engineering expertise and effort to design a Class D circuit than a Class A/AB circuit, which is why the Class D market is dominanted by a handful of OEMs who supply modules and chips to everyone else. I don't know enough to say whether power supply design is any more or less critical to Class D performance, but I don't see any reason to assume that it's less critical. Similarly, it's not obvious that part selection is any less critical or that part cost should be cheaper. It would be interesting to compare the parts cost for the amplifier section of a $10k Class A or AB amp with the cost of one of the better Class D modules. Thermal design is more challenging for Class A than AB than D, which drives Class D to be cheaper at high power levels. But at low to moderate power levels, if anything I would expect Class D to be more expensive than Class A/AB for equivalent performance.
It seems like you're presuming that most of the cost of an audio amplifier is in the amplification circuit, and therefore Class D should be cheaper due to the availability of OEM amplification modules. To me that's like saying all DACs should be cheap because they all use off the shelf DAC chips.
Follow Ups:
Abe is right. It's profit driven, as most new technologies are and should be. Not trying to build a better mousetrap, but to find a way to build the mousetrap cheaper than the competition. Follow the money...
Class D is not price competitive with power op-amps e.g. LM3875, or even discrete Class AB circuits at moderate power levels. Nor was it meant to be. Class D is all about efficiency.
That efficiency translates to cost savings at high power levels, where Class AB amps necessarily get large.
Well we have 10K to play with , cost savings ....?
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