What is Reddit's opinion of Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

You should add a capacitor in the feedback path so your closed loop DC gain is 1, or your feedback will try to force the DC voltage at your output to be (1 + R8/R7) * (1 + R2/R1) * V+ (force the inputs to the diff. pair equal, while the output voltage feeds into a divider formed by R8 and R7).

Also, R4 is superfluous. (EDIT: starting to doubt a bit here: the basic concept is current based but R4 might have some influence through the Early effect, I'm a bit rusty here)

If you want to learn more about designing power amplifiers and how to select component values I recommend Douglas Self's book and Rod Elliott's audio design website.

You would be best off looking at the segments of the circuit (differential pair, VAS and output stage) and understanding how they work and what they should do. If you want to do a very involved analysis you could look at small signal analysis for a start hybrid pi model. This will give you a good idea of how the segments work together. If you are really interested, I personally liked Douglas Self's book on power amplifiers a lot, it will have all the information you need and more.

 

However, if you just want to know what the signal (AC) and operating point (DC) voltages and currents should be, you can just toss the schematic in a simulator like LTspice and have a look from there. This might be quite frustrating though, as it will be harder to troubleshoot if you don't understand the circuit well (making small wiring mistakes/having faulty components can really mess stuff up and without understanding what all the parts do finding the fault can be tricky).

 

Like /u/fdbk mentioned, some images of waveforms would help us help you.

> recommend to a noob who wants to learn ECE?

Design, build, and debug things that don't contain CPUs. Get to the root of ECE: amps and volts. Continuous quantities that range from 10^-3 to 10^+7 ; not discrete, not digital, not binary.

Design analog doodads out of transistors and opamps; (BOOK_1) is an excellent set of stretch-goal projects along these lines.

Design digital doodads out of SSI and MSI logic chips (CD4000; 74HC00; etc). Build yourself a digital clock with seven segment LED readouts.

Design radios and wireless microphones and "room bugs" and "telephone taps" and other kinds of communication gear; (BOOK_2) is a source of inspiration.