Please explain why I would choose one over the other?

Johnny Vinyl

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May 16, 2010
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I've heard of single-ended and push-pull, but haven't a clue as to what the differences are and why one would need one over the other.

Can someone explain the differences between these two ...preferably in a not too technical manner.

Thanks.
 

mep

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Apr 20, 2010
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John-You don’t “need” one over the other, it’s a choice based on preference. The vast majority of single-ended amplifiers on the market are vacuum tube amplifiers. Nelson Pass has made a few SS single-ended amps and they are fairly low-power.

As Tom tried to explain in a non-confusing but yet still confusing way, a single-ended amplifier typically only uses one device to amplify both halves of the music signal. A push-pull amp has a minimum of one device for each half of the waveform. Think about the Dynaco ST-70 for example. It is a push-pull amplifier and it uses two EL-34 tubes for each channel. If the ST-70 was a single-ended amplifier, it would only have one EL-34 per channel.

A big benefit claimed for single-ended amplifiers is that you don’t have any cross-over distortion and you have probably heard that term before. Since you only have one device amplifying both halves of the music signal, it doesn’t have to “hand-off” the signal to another device. The drawback to single-ended is much higher second harmonic distortion which some people actually love until the sound gets so wooly they think they are wearing a blanket. Push-pull tube amps combine the signal in the output transformer and it cancels out even order harmonics.

Single-ended amps usually tend to be very low power. The main exception to that is parallel single-ended amps which I won’t talk about in order to keep this as non-technical as I can per your request.
 

DonH50

Member Sponsor & WBF Technical Expert
Jun 22, 2010
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Hmmm... Had a longer post but lost it, and decided it wasn't worth it.

Single-ended can be class A, B, C, whatever. A differential design ideally cancels even-order harmonics, leaving odds dominate. This provides lower distortion, but odd harmonics generally sound "raspier" to us so in fact a SE design with distortion dominated by the second-order term may sound better even though it actually has higher distortion. SE designs are most often biased class A (I am not sure I have seen an audio design that was not), meaning "full" current flows through the device always.

Push-pull I have seen used two ways. In the first, and the way I use it, it describes an output stage that typically uses complementary (or two out of phase) devices so one sources current (pushes) and one sinks it (pulls). Again, these can be biased in class A, AB, B, C, whatever. Because currrent flow switches from one device to the other, there can be distortion as the signal crosses over from say the source (+) to sink (-) device. For this reason you rarely find class B audio amps (and never class C IME); they are usually AB so a small amount of current always flows through both devices to reduce crossover distortion.

The other way I have seen push-pull used is to describe a differential circuit, but that was not how I was taught/weaned.

I don't think any of this disagrees with previous descriptions but I did not read closely; different ways to describe the same thing.
 
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KeithR

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May 7, 2010
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A big benefit claimed for single-ended amplifiers is that you don’t have any cross-over distortion and you have probably heard that term before. Since you only have one device amplifying both halves of the music signal, it doesn’t have to “hand-off” the signal to another device. The drawback to single-ended is much higher second harmonic distortion which some people actually love until the sound gets so wooly they think they are wearing a blanket. Push-pull tube amps combine the signal in the output transformer and it cancels out even order harmonics.

All SET isn't "wooly"---for example, never heard Lamm sound that way. I like push-pull as well---though some are sounding more ss by the day. For instance, the new Vac gear sounded just like my big Mac SS monos.

It really is dependent on your speaker sensitivity as to which way you go. And there are good and bad examples of all topologies.
 

adanny

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Mar 13, 2012
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If you go to the Pass Labs website, you will see several great technical papers by Nelson pass on these topics. https://passlabs.com/technical-articles
No one article describes it all, and they are written so that understanding all of it without 1st year college physics is hard, but give it a shot
 

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