The TDA1517

If only lions knew 20 years ago what they know now. Of course, there was no way to look up how to connect a TDA1517. Sadly, lions have no interest in building audio amplifiers anymore. If the interest of the 25 year old lion was combined with the knowledge of today, it would have saved a lot of money & grief.

It was an experiment to get more sound reinforcement for less weight, but speaker drivers have to be heavy to be loud. The TDA1517 can get plenty of loudness from large, heavy speakers but the same job can be done by a $10 bluetooth speaker.

An LM324 inverting amplifier with virtual ground can boost the phone output to the 1V peak to peak that the TDA1517 does best with. Key to the preamp is actively driving the virtual ground with a voltage regulator. If the virtual ground is passive or a follower output, the LM324 will only generate the negative side of the waveform.