(NEWS)Merrill Audio: Introducing the new ELEMENT 110 Monoblock Power Amplifiers

Introducing the new ELEMENT 110 Monoblock Power Amplifiers using the latest Gallium Nitride (GaN) transistors and LLC power supplies. The ELEMENT 110 takes from the Oganesson Project started over 8 years ago, to bring the speed and power of the GaN with the Oganesson Design elements that make the Merrill Audio designs with zero feedback, zero dead time for the most musical experience. Now at a price point of $12,500, the ELEMENT 110 design uses the GaN to its full capability like never before in an Audio Amplifier. This is demonstrated with the zero dead time and zero feedback design.

GaN Transistors uses a new material that has a great number of benefits. GaN Transistors much lower capacitance and the resistance when the GaN Transistor is in the ON state (fully conducting) is very low. Both these features allow the GaN Transistor to operate in real time for the purposes of audio, without any lag to the signal. For the audio signal range, this brings the dead time to zero. Hence the audio signal is processed in real time. Since the GaN Transistor switches ON and OFF at such a fast speed, there is very little heat given off during this switch.

MOSFETs had a much larger capacitance and designers to delay responding to sections of the audio signal while waiting for the transistor to turn ON or OFF which was significant and cause a smoothing of the audio in the heavy feedbacked systems. The time waiting for the MOSFET to complete its response and ignoring the audio signal is called dead time. Designers spent a lot of time using feedback to reduce this distortion. But it also reduced the amount of detail provided and mellowed out the sound. MOSFETs have a much larger ON state resistance also, which dissipates more heat since it has a large voltage drop across the device. This resulted in much larger devices and larger heatsinks to remove the heat.

his picture shows a step response (the ON/OFF switch) comparison between a MOSFET and GaN transistor. The blue line is the GaN switching and the red line is the MOSFET switching. Note the delay in the MOSFET turning ON/OFF compared to the GaN transistor turn ON/OFF. *picture from EPC.

The challenge of using GaN Transistor switching nearly instantaneously was the repercussions of this speed. Any parasitic Capacitance or Inductances on the Printed Circuit Boards (these are capacitances and inductances due to nearby traces and traces above and below this layer), parasitic capacitances and inductances from the components (the undesired capacitance and inductance from the packaging of the capacitors, resistors, and inductors used) caused a change in the time the output signal stays steady. This GaN Transistor’s fast turn on and off also can create ripples in the power supply that cannot keep up with the high demands of such speed. To overcome the parasitic capacitance and inductance of the PCB and the components, a very specialized PCB design has to be engaged. The copper traces have to be as short as possible, the distance between traces has to be kept constant, and the thickness of the trace will have an impact on the parasitic. The layers of the board have to be exact also and are used in the calculation on the parasitic capacitance and inductance. Components have to be hand-picked. The larger the component the larger the parasitic. Hence it is common to see the use of components the size of 1mm x 0.5mm. The typical size used is the 0603 which is 1.6 mm by 0.85 mm as shown in the picture. Size 0201 could be used however due to power requirements, some sizes are too small.

With all these challenges the amp boards have to be multi-layer, in our case 6 layers, and precise. The GaN Transistors used are about 4mm in size. Due to the size, X-rays are used to confirm that the GaN transistors are soldered correctly to the board. The board manufacture has to be fully automated. While in the design phase, testing and error resolution is tedious.

Blown GaN Transistors.

Working GaN Transistors. R82 is a 0603 chip. C104 is a much larger 1206 chip.

On top of all the demands of a GaN design, the audio signal has to be understood and listened to. It is hard to measure all the nuances of an Audio signal. A sine wave is much to simple to represent what Audio requires. We remove all connectors from the audio path. Wires are copper-to-copper contact and of the finest quality. Components are hand-picked for sound. No capacitors in the full audio path.

Using all the experience of Merrill Audio’s years of the best designs, the ELEMENT 110 has a combination of a very musical output along with all the benefits of GaN Transistor technology.

The ELEMENT 110 Power amplifiers are finished in a fine casing with a Rose Gold front panel sporting a 7” high resolution, glass capacitive touch screen color LED display. The display is used to mute the amps, show the temperature of the boards, and a large VU meter to show approximate power at 4 ohms.

Call 415.562.4434 or email Sales-123@merrillaudio.net to listen to the new exciting ELEMENT 110 Monoblock Power amplifiers.

Leave a Reply