cute enclosure, I love it. I suggest you to explore TDA7265. it contains two TDA2050 with additional stability and muting feature. cheers from Indonesia
Interesting video, I used to build and use these back in the 1990's. I have a thing for class D amps now as there are so efficient and when built correct sound just as good. I use a toroidal transformer with good quality caps with class D you can get away with a small, say 2A transformer and still wake the neighbours up if you wished :D
Thanks for the post. It does show what these appliances use with simple conventional power supplies, with the 60Hz mains, and a 4 ohms/channel load. I know of 1 outdoor PA system operator who uses 4 12V lead acid (car) batteries for a -24V, 0V, +24V supply, as mains power was noisy, and less reliable, and requiring a lot more cable. (A power failure could therefore be announced, with any necessary safety directions). The load impedance was 8 ohms.. On completion the batteries would be paralleled and connected to the car to charge on the way home...
He charged four car batteries on his way home? So he had a thousand miles to drive, or did he just have a generator on a pickup or something? Lol.. Ok, not a thousand, maybe just hundreds of miles :p
+jan christian Frodahl It was done in Adelaide suburbs, South Australia, but I think the general process was to use a mains (in Australia, 240V AC) operated charger on completion (a whole day of use), and at that, a 24V version, to charge 2 x 12V lead-acid batteries in series. They delivered many hours of low noise power using say, a 50W(RMS)/channel capable amplifier.. Today there is 'Class D' for the lower frequency audio for efficiency, but at the expense of component life, especially electrolytic capacitors...
have you considered building an audiophile grade power supply? A linear power supply using a toroidal transformer? would love to see how they are built, an Sbooster is like 100+$ something tells me that a diy project would be much cheaper without skimping on quality.
If this chip is operated on lower voltage say +/- 12 v split supply or 24 Volts single supply @ 2 Ampere , will it draw more current than 2 Amperes ( as provided by the power supply) or less current while giving lower output power ?
John - I enjoyed the video, but I have an off-topic question for you. In the video, you mention that you use this amp in your "front room". I grew up in Chicago and what most people call a "living room" we called it the "front room". When I moved about 75 miles southwest of Chicago, no one knew what I was talking about. My wife grew up where I live now and she was confused the first few times that I said "front room". I was just wondering if you are in/from Chicago or if that term in used elsewhere. Thanks!
I lived in Indiana up until I was 10 but grew up in SW Ohio where I remain. The homes I grew up in had separate rooms we called family, living and dining. The living and dining rooms were rarely used except for special occasions (we ate at a table in the kitchen). Many new home designs seem to do away with the separate family and living room concept and have one large room called a "great room'. The front room in my house is mostly converted into a work area so calling it a living room doesn't seem right.
JohnAudioTech - OK, I was wondering if it was a Chicago thing or if other regions use that term as well. BTW... Clean that bench off! It's starting to look as bad as mine! LOL Actually, I'm right in the middle of adding shelves above my bench to put my test equipment on and free up some bench space. I'm also going through a bunch of junk boxes and putting everything back where it belongs. It's been a slow project because I keep finding things I want to work on. LOL Electronics is a sickness! I've had it since I was 10 years old and I'm 48 now. :-)
I got a TDA 2040 because of this video. I greatly appreciate you posting these "gems" of videos! I am trying to build a guitar amp with the most power from a chip that will run on 9 V into 8 ohms. Do you have any suggestions? I have already made several versions of the good old LM 386 and it is good, I want more power! Ha Ha! Thankz
Hi ATL, All American Five Radio, Rick, on UA-cam, a very good channel for electronics, has a video on a push/pull transistor audio amp using a TIP31, NPN, and a TIP42, PNP which produced a nice sine wave. I have no idea on the power output. For 9 volts into 8 ohms I would suggest the Runoffgroove.com Ruby 1/2 watt amp. Where it is based on the LM386, check out John Audio Techs video on proper grounding of LM386, it uses an MPF102 J-FET and has a 1K gain pot, they work great. I built a little amp using a Ruby circuit and a Jensen MOD series 8", 8 ohm, 20 watt speaker and it rocks. Give one a try, a fun build. Be good, C.
Your power supply voltage is the limiting factor here. You can get a few more milliwatts with a better IC or drive a lower impedance with an IC that will handle it to get about 1.5 watts (at 4 ohms). A bridged amp circuit will give you much more power as well. If your 9 volt source is the little 9v transistor radio batteries then you must worry about run time with the higher load. My recommendation is with the speaker. Use a true guitar speaker of the largest size possible for your application. An 8 or 10" guitar driver will give you volume and a good tone.
JohnAudioTech Hey John, thanks for the reply! I want to put an amp in a cigar box or a cigar box guitar. I have some small 5-10 watt speakers @ 4-8-16 ohms and would like to use them. If I go with a bigger cabinet I have some 6-8-10-12 inch guitar speakers @ 8 ohms. I thought about using two 9 volt batteries in parallel to double the current for longer play time and add a jack for a 12 volt wall wart. I will try the tda2040 with a healthy heat sink and a 12volt supply and see if I can get more volume than a LM 386-4. Thankz
How do you mean caps across 2 rails of DC , there is only 2 rails and you cant hook up caps in series with it it needs to be in parallel , so 2 wires in parallel , there is only one way to do it, you cant have 2 caps per rail if you dont have 3 rails there . Its a center taped but i think you are not using it like center tap , otherwise you couldn't use that Gretz you would need 2 of them , You got me confused .
I wanted to use a tone control between my source, and my power AMP circuitry (tda 2040) but I don't want my that the tone control causes a lot of distortion to my amplifier. Do you think that is better to use an baxandall similar circuit, with an op amp, or use a single transistor preamp circuit?
I need to build something like that specifically for my computer. Maybe have it integrated in to the computer and run it off the computers power supply. would only need like 8 watts per channel and maybe a separate channel just for low frequency's
One of the main reasons to buy an external amp for a PC is to disconnect it from the noisy power in a PC, which is full of all kinds of electronic noise and RF. I wouldn't recommend this approach, the PC's power is likely to be quite dirty. You may be able to get away with it if you dedicate an entire rail to it(the rails should be described on a sticker on the power supply), but there is no guarantee that the power supply keeps that rail isolated from the rest with no cross talk.
true but even most of the top tier psu's available today don't have true split rails. it's usually one rail with crap tons of current split into multiple virtual rails with current shunts to monitor current on said virtual rails. and modern psu's have pretty good filtering on them. the one I have now is old by modern standards but is reasonably good with a single rail split virtually into two rails each with a limit of 62 amps (124 amps which is shared by the two virtual rails and the 5 volt rail which is rated at like 13 amps or something like that so the two 12 volt rails could never really be loaded to 62 amps any ways and even if someone were to do so it would be peak rated anyways as loading it maxed out like that is going to cause a bang or a fizzle) and while i have it under load i barely get 100 milivolts of ripple and voltage only drops by .1 volts so its pretty clean and stable. the noise can be almost completely eliminated by Rf chokes and capacitors. the real noise issue would be between the sound card be it internal or a pci/pci-e add on. Ive tryed something like this before with broken crappy computer speakers that were blown and the internal integrated amp was rated for 16 volts DC but would work fine off 11.5 to 17 volts and it sounded good powering a cheap set of goodwill book shelf speakers at the time. got reasonably loud too for only 8 WPC. the only issue was when the gain was turned up so did the noise floor and all the nasty noise. if I kept it reasonably low you couldn't hear any noise even if you were right on top of the speakers.
cute enclosure, I love it.
I suggest you to explore TDA7265. it contains two TDA2050 with additional stability and muting feature.
cheers from Indonesia
Interesting video, I used to build and use these back in the 1990's. I have a thing for class D amps now as there are so efficient and when built correct sound just as good. I use a toroidal transformer with good quality caps with class D you can get away with a small, say 2A transformer and still wake the neighbours up if you wished :D
Have you considered upgrading the voltage with an opamp stage.
Thanks for the post. It does show what these appliances use with simple conventional power supplies, with the 60Hz mains, and a 4 ohms/channel load. I know of 1 outdoor PA system operator who uses 4 12V lead acid (car) batteries for a -24V, 0V, +24V supply, as mains power was noisy, and less reliable, and requiring a lot more cable. (A power failure could therefore be announced, with any necessary safety directions). The load impedance was 8 ohms.. On completion the batteries would be paralleled and connected to the car to charge on the way home...
He charged four car batteries on his way home?
So he had a thousand miles to drive, or did he just have a generator on a pickup or something?
Lol..
Ok, not a thousand, maybe just hundreds of miles :p
+jan christian Frodahl It was done in Adelaide suburbs, South Australia, but I think the general process was to use a mains (in Australia, 240V AC) operated charger on completion (a whole day of use), and at that, a 24V version, to charge 2 x 12V lead-acid batteries in series. They delivered many hours of low noise power using say, a 50W(RMS)/channel capable amplifier.. Today there is 'Class D' for the lower frequency audio for efficiency, but at the expense of component life, especially electrolytic capacitors...
jmcgatkinson
I thought he was charging with the car hehe, because that would take SOME time :p
Would be SOME alternator too..
have you considered building an audiophile grade power supply? A linear power supply using a toroidal transformer? would love to see how they are built, an Sbooster is like 100+$ something tells me that a diy project would be much cheaper without skimping on quality.
Nice project John.
what about the conversion loss at transformer + rectifier ?
but ~30 watts @
watch the video, its 13-15 watts per channel. Murkho.
Can you show us this running on DC Bud ?
In this video, u said LM1875. With this setup... Could be better than TDA2050?
If this chip is operated on lower voltage say +/- 12 v split supply or 24 Volts single supply @ 2 Ampere , will it draw more current than 2 Amperes ( as provided by the power supply) or less current while giving lower output power ?
it should draw the same amount of power.
John - I enjoyed the video, but I have an off-topic question for you. In the video, you mention that you use this amp in your "front room". I grew up in Chicago and what most people call a "living room" we called it the "front room". When I moved about 75 miles southwest of Chicago, no one knew what I was talking about. My wife grew up where I live now and she was confused the first few times that I said "front room". I was just wondering if you are in/from Chicago or if that term in used elsewhere. Thanks!
I lived in Indiana up until I was 10 but grew up in SW Ohio where I remain. The homes I grew up in had separate rooms we called family, living and dining. The living and dining rooms were rarely used except for special occasions (we ate at a table in the kitchen). Many new home designs seem to do away with the separate family and living room concept and have one large room called a "great room'. The front room in my house is mostly converted into a work area so calling it a living room doesn't seem right.
JohnAudioTech - OK, I was wondering if it was a Chicago thing or if other regions use that term as well. BTW... Clean that bench off! It's starting to look as bad as mine! LOL Actually, I'm right in the middle of adding shelves above my bench to put my test equipment on and free up some bench space. I'm also going through a bunch of junk boxes and putting everything back where it belongs. It's been a slow project because I keep finding things I want to work on. LOL Electronics is a sickness! I've had it since I was 10 years old and I'm 48 now. :-)
Yes it is! When I clean my bench, it is messy again in 1 week.
Is the heatsink size 4" x 2" ?
Thats quite a lot,that explains why my lm1875 amp I used many moons ago dimmed the lights.
How many channels? It would take 500 watts for me to notice the lights dimming a little in my house.
2 channels, huge toroidal transformer and no softstart
I got a TDA 2040 because of this video. I greatly appreciate you posting these "gems" of videos! I am trying to build a guitar amp with the most power from a chip that will run on 9 V into 8 ohms. Do you have any suggestions? I have already made several versions of the good old LM 386 and it is good, I want more power! Ha Ha! Thankz
Hi ATL, All American Five Radio, Rick, on UA-cam, a very good channel for electronics, has a video on a push/pull transistor audio amp using a TIP31, NPN, and a TIP42, PNP which produced a nice sine wave. I have no idea on the power output. For 9 volts into 8 ohms I would suggest the Runoffgroove.com Ruby 1/2 watt amp. Where it is based on the LM386, check out John Audio Techs video on proper grounding of LM386, it uses an MPF102 J-FET and has a 1K gain pot, they work great. I built a little amp using a Ruby circuit and a Jensen MOD series 8", 8 ohm, 20 watt speaker and it rocks. Give one a try, a fun build. Be good, C.
Your power supply voltage is the limiting factor here. You can get a few more milliwatts with a better IC or drive a lower impedance with an IC that will handle it to get about 1.5 watts (at 4 ohms). A bridged amp circuit will give you much more power as well. If your 9 volt source is the little 9v transistor radio batteries then you must worry about run time with the higher load.
My recommendation is with the speaker. Use a true guitar speaker of the largest size possible for your application. An 8 or 10" guitar driver will give you volume and a good tone.
JohnAudioTech Hey John, thanks for the reply! I want to put an amp in a cigar box or a cigar box guitar. I have some small 5-10 watt speakers @ 4-8-16 ohms and would like to use them. If I go with a bigger cabinet I have some 6-8-10-12 inch guitar speakers @ 8 ohms. I thought about using two 9 volt batteries in parallel to double the current for longer play time and add a jack for a 12 volt wall wart. I will try the tda2040 with a healthy heat sink and a 12volt supply and see if I can get more volume than a LM 386-4. Thankz
Audio Tech Labs Hi ATL, If the reply was about the Runoffgroove.com Ruby amp, that was me, not John Audio Tech. Be good, C.
How do you mean caps across 2 rails of DC , there is only 2 rails and you cant hook up caps in series with it it needs to be in parallel , so 2 wires in parallel , there is only one way to do it, you cant have 2 caps per rail if you dont have 3 rails there . Its a center taped but i think you are not using it like center tap , otherwise you couldn't use that Gretz you would need 2 of them , You got me confused .
Supply is dual DC (3 wire) for positive & negative voltage and common ground.
how , dual DC with one transformer and one bridge rectifier
The reason why your transformer is humming is because it doesn't know the words to the song LoL...
очень хорошо. молодец!
do you think that its worth use an tone control circuit???
No problem to add a tone control circuit in front of the power amp if you wanted. Personally, I like direct from the source without coloration.
I wanted to use a tone control between my source, and my power AMP circuitry (tda 2040) but I don't want my that the tone control causes a lot of distortion to my amplifier. Do you think that is better to use an baxandall similar circuit, with an op amp, or use a single transistor preamp circuit?
OP amp IC is the way to go. NE5532 is great for this.
Thank you very much
I need to build something like that specifically for my computer. Maybe have it integrated in to the computer and run it off the computers power supply. would only need like 8 watts per channel and maybe a separate channel just for low frequency's
One of the main reasons to buy an external amp for a PC is to disconnect it from the noisy power in a PC, which is full of all kinds of electronic noise and RF. I wouldn't recommend this approach, the PC's power is likely to be quite dirty.
You may be able to get away with it if you dedicate an entire rail to it(the rails should be described on a sticker on the power supply), but there is no guarantee that the power supply keeps that rail isolated from the rest with no cross talk.
true but even most of the top tier psu's available today don't have true split rails. it's usually one rail with crap tons of current split into multiple virtual rails with current shunts to monitor current on said virtual rails. and modern psu's have pretty good filtering on them. the one I have now is old by modern standards but is reasonably good with a single rail split virtually into two rails each with a limit of 62 amps (124 amps which is shared by the two virtual rails and the 5 volt rail which is rated at like 13 amps or something like that so the two 12 volt rails could never really be loaded to 62 amps any ways and even if someone were to do so it would be peak rated anyways as loading it maxed out like that is going to cause a bang or a fizzle) and while i have it under load i barely get 100 milivolts of ripple and voltage only drops by .1 volts so its pretty clean and stable. the noise can be almost completely eliminated by Rf chokes and capacitors. the real noise issue would be between the sound card be it internal or a pci/pci-e add on. Ive tryed something like this before with broken crappy computer speakers that were blown and the internal integrated amp was rated for 16 volts DC but would work fine off 11.5 to 17 volts and it sounded good powering a cheap set of goodwill book shelf speakers at the time. got reasonably loud too for only 8 WPC. the only issue was when the gain was turned up so did the noise floor and all the nasty noise. if I kept it reasonably low you couldn't hear any noise even if you were right on top of the speakers.
nice
hey John, you miss pronounced that name it's Raddy O Shack, I think they are Irish?!!!
That bridge diode looks too weak to me .If you use a metal Box it will desipate the heat easier. Radioshack is not famouse for its quality parts.
First comment here
Diagram please