Welcome to the first day of February! I think I've thoroughly covered enough tests and information in this video that any beginner can use this IC without running in to problems.

However, for years, I used to hate this IC with a passion for two reasons. The first being its noise floor; it can be very hissy, so it's not really suitable to power headphones. Secondly, it's the fact that it's very easy for this amplifier to go in to oscillation. This can result in "motorboating" or howling on the output. However, during this video's tests, I'm starting to warm up to it (listening to "Electric Dreams" through it reminded me of the late '80's with the same song on a portable Sanyo radio).

The take away is, proper supply rail decoupling is a must (a 100nF capacitor between positive and negative close to the IC and a bulk-filtering capacitor of about 220uF) will help if the circuit is far from the power supply. Layout is also very important, and you'd want to really consider whether or not you want to boost its internal gain of 20 to 200. DC bypassing using a resistor and electrolytic capacitor (in an RC filter configuration fashion) between any interconnecting circuits that use the same supply rails would also be a good consideration.

If any of what I have discussed above is confusing to you as you may be a beginner, do not worry too much about it. In the future, I plan to make more "Electronics Fundamentals" video discussing bypassing and decoupling.

All in all, with the current chosen components of my test circuit, the frequency response is very good and the sound in to a bookshelf speaker is pretty amazing. I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as I did making it!

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