Tantalum Capacitor Benchmark in Portable Audio Applications

Designers of the latest portable audio/video equipment have a wide choice of capacitor solutions for coupling and line applications. The key design criteria includes clear noise-free filtering (high quality audio), stability with temperature, small size, light weight and reasonable cost versus performance value for consumer electronics. The typical capacitance value demand is from 100μF to 330μF for headphone coupling and 10μF for line applications. More capacitor technologies – tantalum, MLCC, NbO and aluminum can be used to meet the capacitance requirements. Tantalum capacitors are increasingly used today in such applications despite in some cases, especially the 10μF line some cheaper solutions are available. The paper, that will be prepared together with a leading audio chip manufacturer Wolfson Microelectronics plc, Scotland, will present results of a capacitor benchmark study in small portable audio applications.