Yes I understand this, practical experiences are much much more valuable than theory.I am not discouraging you anyway. Just putting out problem which I faced so that you are aware of it and can take care in your design.
Good luck!
PCBPOWERGood one. Who is the PCB manufacturer?
afaik, regulated supply improves sound quality this is what I have read from other forums about regulated PS.
Many thanks for your valuable suggestions. I have built unregulated power supply amp with lm3886 in past, and faced no issue with bass, sound was clean and powerful with 10000uf caps on each rail.True, this theory works well with low voltage swing high gain amps (preamps)well. But power amps are a different sort of beasts and they are more happy with a raw unregulated supply most of the times, provided you have a well designed wiring pattern, layout and earthing AFAIK. The theory behind it is that huge bass transients often need energy inputs which cannot be supplied by the power supply (Trafo and rectifier) alone. This is usually compensated by the big reservoir caps . Moreover, chip amps are designed to perform good over a big voltage 'bandwidth'. So, in my opinion, a fair amount of reservoir caps and good layout will do more good than a regulator in this case. I am no authority in power amp design and everything aforesaid is said from my experience in amp building only. Again, in my opinion, better we trust a discrete amp for the low frequency part. chip amps perform stunningly well with high frequencies but inferior in bass reproduction owing to the quasi complimentary output stage. LM 3868 is no exemption, I think but not sure.
Awesome build and my heartiest congratulations!Got all components on this PCB working today, Sound is very clean.
No audible hiss or hum even if I put my ears very close to speakers.
I am yet to assemble this in a box and plug it into my speakers, but I tried it with a open woofer and I can say that there should be no problem with bass or low frequencies as it was easily driving this woofer with heavy cone movement.
High frequency amplifier LM1876 sounds very clean and detailed.
I will probably never go back to unregulated powersupply now.
I used Vishay RN55D resistors and vishay roederstein 1837 capacitor and there sure is a great improvement because of these components in the active filter.
I used toroid transformer from torotrans, it has absolutely no vibrations or humming.
Overall, using high grade components in the audio signal path and regulators for all power supply is definitely worth the extra cost.
I did online research on best opamp for this purpose long time before, I actually don't remember the exact reason for choosing NE5532, but I remember that I shortlisted 2 opamp, NE5532 and other one was something starting with OPA which were best for audio with low distortion, I think I choose NE5532 because it was easily available and widely used and I am using the same since then.I was just curious whether the Opamp 5532 upgrade (with a discrete Opamp) may yield better overall sq. Correct me if I am wrong.
I think you are talking about OPA2134. This is a very famous Opamp among many DIYers.Thanks Saikat.
You are welcome.
I did online research on best opamp for this purpose long time before, I actually don't remember the exact reason for choosing NE5532, but I remember that I shortlisted 2 opamp, NE5532 and other one was something starting with OPA which were best for audio with low distortion, I think I choose NE5532 because it was easily available and widely used and I am using the same since then.
Not sure if discrete opamp will sound good, will have to try but IMO I don't think it will be worth the effort when good audio opamps are readily available in market, can do this for learning though.
I think you are talking about OPA2134. This is a very famous Opamp among many DIYers.