Conclusions:
Although I have not been exhaustive,
hopefully this article will have gone some way to de-
mystifying the operation of the SRPP for some
readers, and illustrated what the SRPP does best. It
is a genuine push-pull amplifier, and is best suited to
small power applications, and will drive surprisingly
heavy loads. Dynamic headphones (normally around 15Ω
to 300Ω) are one ideal application, and a pair of
ECC82 / 12AU7, ECC88 / 6DJ8 or 6SN7 are more
than capable of making a good SRPP headphone
amplifier which will drive most types of headphones,
even cheap, low impedance earbuds!
The textbook version of the SRPP, where Rk1 is
bypassed, offers about twice the gain and half the
output impedance compared to the equivalent
unbypassed version, but the available output power
is actually slightly less. So unless we really need the
extra gain, most designers will choose the
unbypassed version. Not only does it offer less
distortion, but the higher output impedance will allow
the use of a smaller output coupling capacitor. For
example, an ECC88 / 6DJ8 driving a 15Ω