Zitat:This is a curious design, in my experience at least. It is a symmetrical design, using what appears to be two identical amplifiers - indeed there are separate feedback paths for each. You could replace one half of the amplifier with a suitable current source and it would work happily...
At a glance, it might not look like a promising circuit, but the more you study it, the more elegant it seems. It's easy to be "put off" because it appears to be somewhat different to standard "textbook" layouts, but your patience will be rewarded!
Each half is very simple - essentially a long-tailed pair feeding the output device which is connected in a common-emitter configuration. The two intermediate transistors (TR7/8 and TR5/6) are simply emitter-followers, providing current gain...
The long tailed pairs are not fed from a current source, but the tail resistor is fed from a zener-regulated rail which prevents power supply noise reaching the LTPs. Each of the LTPs is unbalanced, meaning that the collector currents in each half of each pair are unequal. Maintaining equal collector currents with a current mirror or similar will provide the cancellation of second-harmonic distortion that is possible with a long-tail pair, but it's an option frequently eschewed by designers - mostly on cost grounds, but also perhaps because mild 2nd order distortion can sound "nice" subjectively.
As already mentioned, the next two transistors are emitter-followers and provide no voltage gain. Interestingly, each of these are only subjected to 25 volts worst-case, meaning that almost any transistor will do the job. And the various resistors (e.g., R16, R20) should protect the transistors in the event of problems with the output devices.
The output devices provide the second stage of voltage amplification. As they work in common emitter mode, the output is able to get relatively close to the supply rails(i.e. good "voltage efficiency"). Negative feedback is taken from the collector of each output transistor, and the loudspeaker output is taken from the junction of R30/31 (the two 0.22Ω resistors that are actually 0.47Ω in later and earlier models). The output impedance is set by the parallel impedance of these two resistors, giving stability and a defined damping factor.
What sets the quiescent current? You need to look to R30/31 for the answer. There is a small voltage across these resistors, and assuming that R30/R31 are accurate in value, you can determine that the standing current is 700mA approximately.
These small voltages are in fact DC offsets within each of the amplifier halves. Normally, one would "design out" DC offsets, but in this amplifier they are deliberately introduced by the 3M7 resistors (R6/11). Note that the exact values of these resistors might vary - and if your example uses 0.47Ω output resistors, expect to find something like 1M8.
The output devices are standard 2N3055/MJ2955 pairs - I'm told that no special selection or matching was required, and that Musical Fidelity relabeled them in an attempt to make the amplifier appear more "mysterious"; perhaps to ensure that their service department had to repair them (or sell transistors to the service trade). They were re-labeled "A1N" and "A1P" respectively, and a 4-digit date code was added - this confuses people because they assume it is part of the type number. Referring to my examples, my date codes are "9042" and "9034" - that means week number 42 and 34 of 1990. This form of date-coding is pretty-much industry-standard.
When replacing them, it's worth upgrading to the Motorola (On-Semi) MJ15003 and MJ15004 pair - these are more highly rated than the originals, and they should be much more reliable in the long term.
A quick note about the power supply arrangements. R13/14 drop the unregulated rails down to the Zener-regulated ±12V rails. These are separate for each channel, but the line preamp is based around a quad op-amp which is powered from these rails on the right power-amp. Hence, the left channel has higher values for R13/14 because of the reduced current demand. This also explains why the right channel disappears first at power-off...
A note about class A operation
The claim of class A operation has always been a controversial matter. It's worth pointing out that Musical Fidelity say that the amplifier is "strongly biased into class A", so apart from the lettering on the front panel (!), they have never claimed that the amplifier is a pure class A design as far as I can establish.
Many commentators, myself included, have analysed this amplifier on the assumption that it behaves exactly like a standard class AB design. In which case, one simply takes the standing current and doubles it to arrive at the peak current available in class A mode. This is then divided by root-2 to find the RMS current, then squared and multiplied by the load impedance to give the maximum continuous sine-wave power. The standing current in my example is 700mA which gives almost exactly 8 watts of class A operation into 8Ω - above this power, or at lower load impedances, the amplifier should revert to class AB. And allow me to quote from a Hi-Fi News review by Dave Berriman, published in the January 1994 issue. This review was admittedly of a mark 3 model (see below), but it's useful information anyway:
Habe nur das gefunden.