Integrated Amplifier
In DevelopmentAn integrated amplifier voiced to drive our speakers — and any passive pair — with measured noise, distortion and thermal behaviour.
Internal ID: amplifier-integrated
Specifications
Specifications are provisional
| Topology | Class-AB, dual-mono power stages (provisional) |
|---|---|
| Power | ~2 × 100 W into 8 Ω (provisional) |
| Inputs | Line ×3, USB-DAC, coax/optical S/PDIF, phono-MM planned |
| DSP | Optional room/preset EQ per speaker model (bypassable) |
| Noise floor | Target < 90 µV residual (provisional) |
| Cooling | Extruded heatsink chassis, no fan at rated power |
Design highlights
- Power stage sized for real speaker loads: stable into 4 Ω, high current on transients.
- Low-noise front end so quiet speakers stay quiet — hiss never becomes part of the sound.
- DSP presets for Tikpal speakers with a hard hardware bypass for purists.
- Thermal design verified by measurement, not datasheet optimism.
- Works with any passive speaker — matching our speakers is a bonus, not a lock-in.
The goal
An amplifier that disappears from the signal chain. Enough power to drive inefficient speakers, a noise floor low enough for sensitive ones, and no sonic fingerprint of its own.
Design notes
The output stage is class-AB with generous bias, so the first watts — where most music lives — come from the quietest part of the transfer curve. The power supply uses separate secondaries per channel; crosstalk and shared impedance are the two cheapest ways to blur a stereo image, and both are measured away.
The DSP section exists because our speakers will ship with presets that fix room boundaries and desk reflections in the digital domain. It is fully bypassable: a relay routes the analogue path around the board entirely.
Amp One is deliberately speaker-agnostic. It is voiced with our speakers, but its specification targets are defined against generic loads — it should do justice to whatever you already own.
What we measured
The measurement archive contains THD+N vs power, SINAD vs power and the noise-floor spectrum of the current prototype. These datasets are labelled sample data until the validation unit is on the bench with calibrated equipment. See Methodology.
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