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Home Forums Products Stompboxes H9: Does headroom depend on power supply voltage? Reply To: H9: Does headroom depend on power supply voltage?

#147988
PeterJohn
Member

Hi…..This is a good question and to answer it correctly requires an understanding of gain structure, which is a relatively simple thing that nonetheless gets overlooked/badly misunderstood by a lot of people.The amount of signal (headroom) that a device can handle is determined by the voltage rails that power the device. A typical op-amp chip can be powered by between +/- 15 volts, which gives a peak to peak voltage swing of 30 volts*. A device powered by a single 9 V battery has a peak to peak swing of ( volts (in practice slightly less), or the same as running 4.5V rails.