This article underlines the oversizing of audio amplifiers compare to microspeaker performances, and propose some guidelines to solve this problem. The power efficiency of the audio reproduction chain has less than 0.01% mainly due to the low efficient electromechanical conversion. Furthermore the amplifier power efficiency is not optimised at nominal output power level. Thus, some significant system level improvements are possible. Regarding the audio quality, the loudspeaker performances is almost ten times lower than the amplifier's one. By being less drastic on some electrical specifications (noise, linearity and frequency range), the amplifiers design trade-off could be redefined to target a better nominal efficiency (without disturbing the acoustical performances).

Authors: Sturtzer, Eric; Pillonnet, Gael; Abouchi, Nacer; Goutti, Frédéric
Affiliations: STMicroelectonics, Grenoble, France; University of Lyon - Lyon Institute of Nanotechnology (UMR CNRS 5270), Lyon, France(See document for exact affiliation information.)
AES Conference: 43rd International Conference: Audio for Wirelessly Networked Personal Devices (September 2011)
Paper Number: 5-2
Publication Date: September 29, 2011
Subject: Implementations

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