Associac¸ao˜ Portuguesa de Engenharia de Audio´ Secc¸ao˜ Portuguesa da Audio Engineering Society Artigo Apresentado no 13◦ Encontro da APEA 7 e 8 de Outubro de 2011 ESMAE O artigo apresentado nesta Conferenciaˆ foi seleccionado com base num resumo estendido revisto por pelo menos dois revisores anonimos´ qualificados. Este artigo foi reproduzido pelo manuscrito previamente fornecido pelo autor, sem qualquer edic¸ao,˜ correcc¸ao˜ ou considerac¸oes˜ do quadro de revisores. A APEA nao˜ se responsabiliza pelo conteudo´ apresentado no artigo. Todos os direitos reservados. E´ proibida a reproduc¸ao˜ total ou parcial do conteudo´ deste artigo sem permissao˜ directa da Associac¸ao˜ Portuguesa de Engenharia de Audio´ . Controlled Audio Valve Amplifier Tiago Campos1,V´ıtor Tavares1, Ricardo Carvalho1 1DEEC - Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal A correspondenciaˆ devera´ ser enderec¸ada para: Tiago Jose´ da Silva Campos (
[email protected]) ABSTRACT Valve amplifiers are well known for their typical problems. Valves tend to age and deteriorate much faster than solid-state devices, making their characteristics to drift quicker with time of use. Consequently, these amplifiers need particular care on this issue, being necessary a regular calibration of bias currents at the output stage, usually adjusted by the user or technicians. It should be also noted that these circuits are known for having typically higher levels of distortion when compared to transistorized amplifiers. Because valves have relatively low amplification factor and also because of large phase shifts, mainly caused by the output transformers, high amounts of (global) negative feedback are not admissible. In opposition, with solid-state amplifiers huge amounts of feedback are generally employed, making transistor amplifiers to present superior linear characteristics.