The MAX9706 evaluation kit (EV kit) is a fully assembled and tested circuit board that evaluates the MAX9706 as well as the MAX9707 ICs. The MAX9706/MAX9707 contain three Class D amplifiers with an internal active crossover to provide stereo highpass outputs and a mono lowpass output. The IC does not require any external components for the active crossover filter. The MAX9706 also features a DirectDrive® stereo headphone amplifier.

The MAX9706 speaker amplifier operates from a 4.5V to 5.5V DC power supply, and delivers 2.3W continuous power into each of three 4Ω speakers. Three different speaker output filtering options are available for ease of evaluation (see the Output Filtering section in the full data sheet).

The MAX9706 headphone amplifier operates from a 3V to 5.5V DC power supply, and delivers up to 95mW per channel into a 16Ω stereo headphone. When the MAX9706 headphone sense detects the insertion of a headphone, the MAX9706 automatically enters the headphone mode.

The EV kit offers an option to select between fixed-frequency modulation (FFM) mode or spread-spectrum modulation (SSM) mode. The EV kit can be synchronized with an external clock, and the EV kit provides a synchronization output that allows multiple units to be cascaded in a system.

The MAX9706 EV kit gain is jumper selectable. The EV kit also features an option to select the crossover frequency between the stereo highpass outputs and the mono lowpass output. The MAX9706 shutdown supply current is only 0.5µA (typ).