Aavik P-880 Power Amplifier

Description

Aavik P-880

By dividing the Aavik I-880 integrated amplifier into separate pre- and control amplifiers, we have created the Aavik P-880 and the Aavik C-880. This separation has reduces the noise floor, to an even lower level, refine the signal, and increase the power resources. Furthermore, this division has created space for new technologies, which have further contributed to aN even larger sound stage with an extremely quiet background.
Through a long and intensive research and development process, Aavik’s engineering team identified several characteristic elements in the traditional Class A amplifier design that could be improved, which has had a very positive effect on the soundstage and musicality.

Aavik P-880 200W pure class A amplifier

Aavik have designed a circuitry that constantly keeps the bias spread 0,63 V above the required current, no matter where it is in the cycle. So, no matter how much current the power amp requires to perform, it always stays in Class A up to an impressive 2×200 W into 8 ohms, while at the same time not consuming unnecessary power.
This significant reduction in the power requirements of the amplifier allowed Aavik to design the capacitors as smaller units and place them locally, so that essentially each of the eight pairs of output transistors has its own capacitor bank right next to it. This means that the current does not have to flow through long wire harnesses and long circuit boards.

The current is always directly at the output transistor, which means a shorter signal path and therefore less noise. In addition, this innovative Aavik design also means that the 880 amplifiers do not get as hot as conventional Class A amplifiers, resulting in higher efficiency.

Aavik P-880 Resonant mode power supply

This Aavik series is designed to ensure massive power resources with ultra-low noise. Unlike the square waves used by conventional switch mode power supplies, this Aavik series boast a resonant mode design which is principally driven by sine waves.
When more power is needed, the operating frequency increases, which, in turn, has the advantage that the power density also increases, thus allowing higher peak power when required by the music.
The noise floor in the raw power supply is extremely low but could be even further lowered by the ultra-low noise regulators supplying the different parts of the circuit. The noise of these regulators is measured in a few microvolts respectively nanovolts, which is significantly lower than the noise level of conventional regulators.
The principle of a traditional class A power supply is to create switching noise. This happens when the large capacitors have to absorb current from the transformer. Current can only flow into the capacitors when the voltage on the outside is less, so when current is needed, the voltage across the capacitors will be lower than the 50/60 Hz cycle. Although defined as a linear power supply, there are a lot of current transients flowing in these power supplies.
The Aavik 880 amplifier has four 500W power factor corrected resonant mode power supplies. The 500w power supplies combined with the extremely large power banks mean that the amplifier can deliver peak currents in excess of 80A, so it is not the power supply in the Aavik 880 amplifier that will limit how much you can feed into your speakers in transient and they will never switch .