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How Tiny Will They Get? – The Latest Super-Miniature Audio Amps

July 2nd, 2010

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New generation super-miniature amplifiers are a result of the same miniaturization that has caused computers and cell phones to shrink. Products are shrinking at a rapid pace. At the same time, manufacturers are packing in more and more features. In the past, tube amps would be commonplace and take up a big part of the living room. Tube amps still have their fair share of fanatics. Nonetheless they have been replaced by solid-state amps for the most part.

Today’s amps integrate traditional pre-amps and power amps and arrange everything neatly in a single package no larger than a VCR. Thanks to latest developments in audio technology regarding amplifier power efficiency, a new generation of super-miniature amps has become feasible, such as the Amphony Model 100 microFidelity amp. These mini amps take up no more space than a deck of cards but deliver up to 50 Watts, which is adequate to drive a speaker to high volume.

Past audio amplifiers with “Class-A” and “Class-AB” architectures have relatively low power efficiency. Analog audio amplifiers will only convert between 20% to 30% of the consumed energy into audio while the left over portion is radiated as heat. Analog amplifiers hence require considerable cooling which is done by heat sinks that are often bulky and prevent the amplifier from being made very small.

“Class-D” amplifiers are based on a digital design which offers larger power efficiency than “Class-A” or “Class-AB” amplifiers – typically in the order of 80% to 95%. Consequently only a small portion is wasted as heat which was the key in being able to miniaturize audio amplifier designs. One main disadvantage of “Class-D” amplifiers is the fact that digital “Class-D” amplifiers use a switching stage at the output which causes non-linearity and therefore some amount of distortion of the audio signal. This downside has slowed the progress of digital amplifiers.

More recent “Class-T” and newer “Class-D” amplifier architectures, such as Amphony’s Model 100, incorporate a feedback mechanism where the output of the amplifier is fed back to the input. This feedback enables the amplifier to compensate for nonlinearities of the output switching stage and therefore lower audio distortion to similar levels of analog amplifiers while preserving the audio efficiency of digital amplifiers.

These new generation miniature audio amplifiers open up applications where previous amplifiers would fail, such as speaker installations where space is premium, including in-ceiling speakers and applications that connect speakers to a cable box or DVD/MP3 player.