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How Tiny Can They Get? - A Look At Super-Miniature Amplifiers

Latest models of audio super-mini amplifiers prove that audio technology has gone the same course as computer technology and cell phones. Everything is becoming smaller and vendors are packing more and more features into the same space. The majority of audio amplifiers would be tube amps in the past. Even though a large number of fanatics still is fond of tube amplifiers, they have been substituted by solid state amps for the most part.

Modern solid-state amplifiers merge the traditional pre amp and power amp stages into a neat single package no larger than a DVD player. New developments in audio technology in regard to power efficiency of have permitted the development of a new generation of super-miniature audio amplifiers, such as Amphony’s microFidelity Model 100. Even though these amps are as small as a deck of cards, they are capable to deliver up to 50 Watts power and easily drive a speaker to full volume.

Past audio amplifiers with "Class-A" and "Class-AB" architectures have quite low power efficiency. Only a small portion of the consumed energy - typically in the order of 20% to 30% - is actually transformed into audio by analog amplifiers. The remaining portion is radiated as heat. Therefore analog amplifiers require a reasonable amount of cooling. The amount of cooling depends on the amplifier rated output power. These heat sinks prevent the amplifier to be built into a small form factor.

The "Class-D" topology of digital amplifiers provides higher efficiency than analog amps. The efficiency usually ranges between 80% and 95%. This allows digital amps to be miniaturized. "Class-D" amplifiers utilize a switching output stage. This stage introduces nonlinearities which causes audio distortion. This difficulty has had an influence on the success 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. By using this feedback, the amplifier can compensate for nonlinearities of the output stage. This enables the distortion to be reduced to levels similar to analog audio amplifiers. At the same time the amplifier provides the high power efficiency of digital amplifiers.

These new miniature audio amplifiers open up applications where traditional amplifiers have failed. They are suited in particular for installations with minimum space, such as in ceiling speakers. Other applications include connecting speakers to a DVD/MP3 player or cable box.

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