Hi,

I'm working on making a small amp. I've drawn up all of the schematics and I am putting it in Eagle at the moment. Something that hit me was that I had very little voltage regulation on the power input. I will be using 8xAA batteries in this particular amplifier. I am building a Ruby amp which is essentially a refined LM386 amp.

I was curious as to how clean I should have the power input. If I put in a regulator and some caps, would it sound better? Or does voltage fluctuation not matter as much?

Thanks.

 

I'd just add a decent electrolytic and small (HF bypass) cap across the battery then not worry about it.

 

I'd just add a decent electrolytic and small (HF bypass) cap across the battery then not worry about it.

Thank you. Would a regulator improve anything at all? It would probably decrease battery life but I might be willing to sacrifice a bit of battery life.

Thank you again.

 

Would a regulator improve anything at all? It would probably decrease battery life but I might be willing to sacrifice a bit of battery life.

No. All it would do is waste some available power, and cause your batteries to go dead faster.