Monday, December 29, 2008

INA 103 micpre + voltage regulator module

This is a mic preamp that I designed around 2004, the preamp itself (larger board on the left) is based on the Burr-Brown (now TI) INA103 instrumentation amplifier, the whole thing is a single gain stage, minimal preamp design with a single ended/impedance balanced output.  To integrate it into a finished project I need to also put in the power supplies for the mic amp and phantom power and a board for metering and maybe an output driver.  I am finally getting to finish it up so I just designed the second board, a discrete class-A voltage regulator module (the boards in the center of the box). The two boards are the same, but the top one is populated to provide +/- 18V for the preamp and the bottom one is set up for +48V phantom power. 


Below is a pic of just the regulator module, it has all surface mount components with everything on the topside, so I can just use doublestick tape or another adhesive to mount it to a chassis without having to drill holes in the chassis for standoffs.  The inputs and outputs are set up to take a surface mount 0.100" header (not popluated) so the whole thing can be made modular and connectorized, making it pretty flexible to mount and integrate into a box.  The circuit uses a blue LED for the voltage reference, which also acts as a power on indicator and also lets you know the charge has bled out of the capacitors and it is safe to work on, which isn't such a big deal for these low voltages, but with tubes you could be zapped by touching a charged cap with a probe or your fingers :).  The last pic is the glam shot of the regulator board in the dark...

I am just finishing up the testing of the power supplies, after that the last thing I need to make is the metering circuit, I am thinking of doing a simple 3-LED stoplight type of meter, yellow for below -20dBu, green for -20 to 0dBu and red for 0 to +20dBu.  Most people have a finer metering resolution downstream either in their mixer or recorder so a coarse level indicator would probaly work fine, although VU meters are always nice to have.  This rack box is only 1U so the prototype is getting LED meters, later ones will probably have VUs on them and maybe hi-Z instrument inputs too.... 

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