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lowering Zout, paralleling or feedback

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Posted on October 19, 2004 at 15:53:01
martin poulin
Audiophile

Posts: 122
Location: Ste-marie, Quebec Canada
Joined: September 25, 2002
It`s seem that the two option have their weakness

wich avenue to explore firt?

Thanks

 

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Re: lowering Zout, paralleling or feedback, posted on October 19, 2004 at 16:32:05
Ralph
Manufacturer

Posts: 4770
Location: Minnesota
Joined: April 24, 2002
I can answer that one-

You have to lower the output impedance somehow. But before you go about that, it is useful to understand what is meant by Output Impedance (Zout).

There seem to be two definitions, and depending on which you ultimately subscribe to is going to say a lot about your design.

Here are the two definitions:

1) Zout is just that- the measure of the impedance of the output section. This is the definition that I prefer.

-Or-

2) Zout is the measure of servo gain available to the output section to control the load. I don't like this definition because the numbers you wind up with don't tell you what loads the amp will actually drive. Plus you have to use feedback.

Either way though, the number has to be low enough to allow the amp to drive your idea of a real world speaker. If you have a speaker that is 100 ohms, that may be all you need. But practically speaking, 8 ohms is a more realistic target.

Even amps with output transformers don't do four ohms very well (I have said this a lot over the years- if you are investing in a tube amplifier, your investment is best served with an 8 ohm speaker, rather then 4, if all other things are equal, regardless of the tube amplifier technology), so if I were you I would not worry too much about 4 ohm loads. But you will want to be able to drive 8 ohms fine.

I don't like feedback, as odd-ordered harmonic distortion above the 7th or 9th order can be enhanced by negative feedback. These harmonics are very noticable to the human ear in vanishingly small amounts. So I prefer more paralleled tube sections. If you have a clean design, the extra power thus gained does not hurt, even if you have a high efficiency speaker.

Have fun...

 

Re: lowering Zout, paralleling or feedback, posted on October 23, 2004 at 01:07:28
Tom Dawson
Audiophile

Posts: 1882
Joined: May 14, 2000
In my OTL, I use paralleling, a moderate amount of negative voltage feedback and positive current feedback to get damping factors in excess of 100 at the speaker terminals.

 

Re: lowering Zout, paralleling or feedback, posted on October 23, 2004 at 19:05:30
martin poulin
Audiophile

Posts: 122
Location: Ste-marie, Quebec Canada
Joined: September 25, 2002
HI

Thanks for your answer

Tom, can you comment about positive current feedback? or have you a link that explain this?

I asked that because I plan to build an otl for my headphone (currently a OTL white cathode follower with poor sounding e88cc)

Martin

 

Re: lowering Zout, paralleling or feedback, posted on October 24, 2004 at 21:56:01
Tom Dawson
Audiophile

Posts: 1882
Joined: May 14, 2000
Hi, Martin -

Positive current feedback basically measures the current through the load (usually by sensing the voltage across a low value resistor in series with the load) and typically adds this voltage, suitably scaled, to the input signal in some manner. One has to be a bit careful when employing positive current feedback, because too much will give the amplifier a negative output impedance characteristic which is not usually desirable and more yet may degrade amplifier transient response and risk large scale oscillations into loads that have low impedance minima.

 

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