{"id":5265,"date":"2020-05-12T12:49:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-12T02:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2020\/05\/12\/an-understandable-chip-the-lm386\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T18:37:51","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T08:37:51","slug":"an-understandable-chip-the-lm386","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2020\/05\/12\/an-understandable-chip-the-lm386\/","title":{"rendered":"An Understandable Chip: The LM386"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Over the years I have made my distaste for integrated circuits very clear. I’ve presented them as mysterious little black boxes that don’t really belong in our homebrew rigs, rigs that we are building, after all, because we want to avoid the use of MYSTERIOUS BLACK BOXES. <\/b><\/div>\n


<\/b> So, I don’t use voltage regulator chips — I use Zener diodes. I prefer analog LC oscillators to AD9850s or Si5351s. And I have repeatedly built discrete component audio amplifiers when most normal people just put an IC AF amplifier in the circuit. <\/b>

<\/b> When I built the Q-31 Shortwave AM receiver, I kind of ran out of gas at the end. I wanted to get the receiver going and I didn’t want to build yet another discrete AF amp. So I used an LM386. <\/b>

<\/b> I rationalized this deviation from cherished values by noting that the discrete AF amplifier circuitry that I was using was remarkably similar to what exists inside the LM386. So that little chip is just as understandable as my discrete component creations. It wasn’t REALLY a mysterious black box… <\/b>

<\/b> Around this time I found a web site that made me feel mush better about all this. It explains very nicely how the little LM386 does such a great job. It really packs a lot of amplification into a very small package. Here is the web site: <\/b>

<\/b> https:\/\/www.electrosmash.com\/lm386-analysis<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Shortly after my transgression, Jenny List over at Hack-A-Day posted a nice piece looking at the inner workings of Op-Amps. Who knows, I may seen be using 741 chips too! <\/b>

<\/b> Here is the Hack-A-Day piece: <\/b>

<\/b> https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2020\/05\/09\/an-op-amp-from-the-ground-up\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the years I have made my distaste for integrated circuits very clear. I’ve presented them as mysterious little black boxes that don’t really belong in our homebrew rigs, rigs that we are building, after all, because we want to avoid the use of MYSTERIOUS BLACK BOXES. So, I don’t use voltage regulator chips — … Continue reading “An Understandable Chip: The LM386”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[115,172,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-audio-amplifiers","category-integrated-circuits","category-si5351"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5265"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5267,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5265\/revisions\/5267"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}