Education in audio electronics - certifications, degrees, etc.

If you can afford the time and expense. your local community college probably has some sort

of electronics program. There are also online courses and books you can read, but nothing

replaces good old class room training with fellow students to share ideas with.

Even though I have worked with electronics all my life, I am heading back to school

to train as a biomedical engineering technologist.

Here is a course local to you.

Basic starter links:

http://sound.westhost.com/amp-basics.htm

http://www.ibiblio.org/kuphaldt/electricCircuits/

http://www.tubecad.com/

Never hurts to check out the headwize projects, many of them go through the design in great detail.

Professionally? Your best bet may be to enroll in an electrical engineering program of sorts at your nearest college/university/choice of post-secondary education.

Hobbyist/DIY/AMB? I imagine your best bet is to do your Googling, buy protoboard, and go pick up electrical engineering course books and teach yourself. It'd be simple enough to buy those books; you can look online for recommendations, or go to the nearest university and buy (or buy a used/old edition) the same books they use in their courses. Finding which books are used should be trivial. Or you can find them online, if you're savvy, savvy?

very nice source

If you are young, get a degree (ie, Electrical Engineering).  The great value of the degree is that it announces to non-experts that you are (probably) competent, enabling you to do varied and interesting design work and charge appropriately for your expertise.  Certainly, you can succeed without the degree, but it is more difficult...and I would argue that anyone with the chops/drive to succeed without the degree would be even more competitive with one.

An EE degree is definitely good in terms of finding a well paying and interesting job (assuming you like EE).  But if all you want to do is make audio amps then a bachelors or higher training in EE is probably not the right route.  Remember EE programs stress the fundamentals and at least 90% of the stuff you learn has nothing to do with building amplifiers.

Also are you talking about a career in audio amp design?  That seems an unlikely field to find much work.  Audio amplification isn't exactly a field of active research.   

As a hobby it can be a lot of fun though, and really doesn't require any formal education.  AMB or Tangent's website are great places to start.

Actually, I know of at least one community college offering courses or even an associates in "audio engineering".  However, I don't know what this entails.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jageur272 

Actually, I know of at least one community college offering courses or even an associates in "audio engineering".  However, I don't know what this entails.

Wikipedia loves you

I would agree with RDS. aside from a hobby there isn't much call for analog circuit design anymore. EE programs dont have MUCH emphasis on linear circuit design unless you look for that specifically.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod 

Wikipedia loves you

 

I would agree with RDS. aside from a hobby there isn't much call for analog circuit design anymore. EE programs dont have MUCH emphasis on linear circuit design unless you look for that specifically.

Oh, I'm fully aware of what audio engineering is :D.  Perhaps I wasn't quite clear: I'm not quite sure if the class or major is similar at all to the description seeing as one of my friends who was taking summer courses in that class didn't really get anything from it at all.  But maybe that's just speaking of the quality of the community college :P

EDIT:

EE programs touch on discrete components and discuss design for about 2 courses, but knowing the basics is always a great start.  However, I wouldn't jump into an EE major at a college just for audio design.  You can learn quite a bit just be reading books specifically for audio design, but it is also essential to know electricity basics.

Maybe the variety of recommendations is due to some vagueness in the original post?  Title asks about degrees and certifications while the body asks what to do to learn about building amplifiers and DACs.    I've discovered that many people (myself included) don't know what they like until after sampling a sufficient variety of things. Can't expect a guy/gal to know what they want until tasting it. So go eat at the buffet of knowledge. :)  Education is always worthwhile as long as you are learning and enjoying the process.

No doubt an EE degree would expose the OP to a greater variety of electronics/design challenges (vs. self-guided learning)...but linear power amplifiers at audio bandwidths?  I'd be surprised if an entire EE curriculum spent more than a few classes on the topic.  So it goes back to the OP, right?  Do you want to learn to design circuits in general (-->EE), or do you want to competently make high-value amplifiers on your own (-->self-guided learning).  Even if you go the US community college route, an EE degree will cost $10,000+.  Typical 4 year state university cost: $50-60,000+.  You could build several good DIY amps of different flavors here for $2-3000 and be on your way to re-implementing stuff within the year, and have some gear to which you can listen.  Library books are free.  Head-fi advice is free...but you won't get the same level of rigorous design, immediate feedback, or interaction that you'll get in a classroom or working 1:1 with someone experienced. 

I'll also suggest that, regardless of the pursuit, finding a good mentor is extremely valuable.  Must be someone who has talents you want to learn, who is accessible to you, and who is predisposed to help you knowing full well it will cost them time/effort.