An Improved Balanced Floating Output Driver IC

An Improved Balanced, Floating Output Driver IC (1,017k)
By Gary K. Hebert, THAT Corporation
AES Convention Paper 5152, 108th Convention, February, 2000

The design and implementation of an improved balanced, floating output driver IC for professional audio applications is described. It is shown that, when the most common existing designs are used to drive ground-referred loads, the grounded output is forced into current-limiting whenever the active output clips. This results in large current spikes flowing into the ground of the receiving device. Techniques used to eliminate this problem, as well as overall performance of the resulting design, are described.