The well-known LM386 is an excellent choice for many designs requiring a small
audio power amplifier (1-watt) in a single chip.
However, the LM386 requires quite a few external parts including some electrolytic capacitors, which unfortunately add volume and cost to the circuit. National Semiconductor recently introduced its Boomer® audio integrated circuits which were designed specifically to provide high quality audio while requiring a minimum amount of external components (in surface mount packaging only). The LM4906 is capable of delivering 1 watt of continuous average power to an 8-ohm load with less than 1% distortion (THD+N) from a +5 V power supply. The chip happily works with an external PSRR (Power Supply Rejection Ratio) bypass capacitor of just 1 µF minimum.
In addition, no output coupling capacitors or bootstrap capacitors are required which makes the
LM4906 ideally suited for cellphone and other low voltage portable applications. The LM4906 features a low-power consumption shutdown mode (the part is enabled by pulling the SD pin high). Additionally, an internal thermal shutdown protection mechanism is provided. The LM4906 also has an internal selectable gain of either 6 dB or 12 dB. A bridge amplifier design has a few distinct advantages over the single-ended configuration, as it provides differential drive to the load, thus doubling output swing for a specified
supply voltage. Four times the output power is possible as compared to a single-ended amplifier under the same conditions (particularly when considering the low supply voltage of 5 to 6 volts).