You have reach The Spine's true form.
Be sure that you use the access point before starting this battle and equip Jaunt and Load as active functions. You will need Jaunt to escape from would-be Tail attacks, and you will want to use load to drop packets and amplify your attack damage on The Spine.
The Spine has 3600 HP and will use a machine-gun like laser attack that will be sprayed across much of the battle area. Be sure to use the white columns for cover when possible, but do not rely on them as they will be destroyed quickly by these laser attacks.
The tail is also still a factor and will come crashing down with massive damage throughout the battle. Timing your Jaunt to escape the attack will pay dividends. Also, the tail is still indestructible, so focus all your efforts on the head of The Spine.
Start by getting up lsoe to the head and placing packets and then stepping back and targeting them with your attacks. The Spine will drop a ton of cells after being dealt 700-800 damage. Collect those cells as fast as you can so that they do not turn into bad cells.
Only attacking while in the turn mode will allow you to do the most amount of damage and give you the awareness you need to dodge incoming attacks from The Spine will in real time. 5-6 turns should do the trick and the Spine will explode.
Once you kill it, you will see a large opening where the head was.
You will actually walk down into the body of The Spine and stab the heart of the beast. This action will lead you back to beign outside the body and will cure the ailing transistor.
Transistor Gameplay
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Everybody has a voice in Cloudbank.
Now the city's most influential voices are vanishing one by one.
It is Red's turn.
Now the city's most influential voices are vanishing one by one.
It is Red's turn.
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Transistor is the Spiritual Successor to Supergiant Games' previous hit Bastion, featuring the returning voice talent of Logan Cunningham as the titular weapon. In the city of Cloudbank, a young singer known as Red is attacked by a mysterious organization known as the Camerata. Somehow, she survives (although she loses her voice) but finds the dead body of a man she knows. Impaled in his stomach is a mysterious sword called the Transistor, and contained within the sword is the soul of the man himself. Red takes the sword, and together they set out to discover the intentions of the Camerata and stop the dangerous force known as the Process from overtaking the city.
Gameplay is a mixture of real-time action comparable to Bastion and tactical RPG-like elements; 'Planning Mode', A.K.A. 'Turn()', can be used to plan a chain of attacks and move around at high speed when executing the plan. There are a number of Functions (a.k.a. spells) to unlock, each capable of being used as a skill themselves, an upgrade to another Function, or as a passive ability, with a huge variety of available combinations.
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This game provides examples of:
- Abstract Scale: The interface sometimes lists some useless flavor data on interactive items (like the number of steps on a staircase). Some of it dips into this, like measuring 'Opinions swayed' on a poster, or a count of Junction Jan's 'satisfactions guaranteed.'
- Action Bomb: Haircuts, a mook spawned by Man that flies into Red and explodes on contact. It can be attacked to make it detonate early, potentially harming Man if he's caught in the blast.
- Action Dress Rip: Red rips her ballgown and dons the coat of the dead man just before the game begins.
- Alas, Poor Villain: All of the Camerata get rather sad deaths. After a long boss fight, Sybil is reduced to flailing about on the stage and even the Man in the Transistor, whom Sybil murdered, feels bad for her and asks Red to put her out of her misery. Grant commits suicide over the horrors his actions have wrought, and Asher follows suit as he can't bear to live in a world without Grant. Royce has a rather disturbing panic attack when he fades away after Red defeats him.
- Anti-Climax: Asher and Grant take their own lives before you get the chance to even fight them. The 'battle' is aptly named 'Cowards'.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- No matter how small the remaining amount of Turn() processing left, any function you have can be used regardless of how much it would go over that leftover. This allows you to tack high-cost functions like Cull() to the end of a series of cheaper set-up functions for devastating combos.
- If you fumble the puzzle that requires two break points to be activated simultaneously enough times, the game outright tells you to use Turn(). Continuing to fumble it after that will cause the game to give up and open the break points for you, although the Transistor will be embarrassed by this (and you should be too).Transistor:Let's just pretend that never happened.
- If you only have one damage-dealing function installed, it overloads last even if it has the highest MEM cost. It's important to note that this only works if your other functions do no damage of any kind; Jaunt(), for example, can do damage if you've upgraded it properly, and the game takes this into account.
- If you manage to overload the Transistor in the first few battles prior to the first access point, you won't lose any functions from doing so. This is especially important in New Game+, as a loadout optimized to beat the final boss is often impractical when dealing with greater numbers of weaker Processes.
- Apocalypse How: The Process is slowly devouring everyone and everything in Cloudbank.
- Apocalyptic Log: The news terminals are an ongoing version of this, with the reporter covering the Process slowly overtaking the city, culminating in one final news story with the reporter standing with the last survivors and saying goodbye to Cloudbank before they're all processed.
- Arc Number: Abusively uses many numbers related to computing, architecture, and general online fora mechanics. Sixteen slots of available input and functions which loops to 32 functions after a certain level. Two achievements (1024, 2048) point to another trope.
- Arc Symbol: Triangles. There's one on Red's dress, her boyfriend's coat, the Transistor's hilt, etc.
- Arc Words:
- 'When everything changes, nothing changes.' The Camerata creed, which is mentioned at least twice, comments on the nature of all-encompassing changes, many of which have occurred through out the game, such as how Cloudbank votes for the weather and the color of the sky, the complete destruction and processing of the city, as well as the fact that every one went to the country in the end. Though should Red let Royce win, then instead, Royce gets to completely rebuild the city.
- 'Come closer.'
- Area of Effect: The Spark() attack. Load() can also be used to create explosive mines, or modify abilities with explosive effects.
- Art Deco: The art direction takes inspiration from Cyberpunk, Art Deco, and Gustav Klimt.
- Assimilation Backfire: The game is kicked off when the man in the Transistor is first processed. Instead of just being absorbed like everyone else, he hijacks it and teleports Red to safety, totally screwing up the Camerata plot.
- Assimilation Plot: The Process and Camerata are processing everyone and everything they can throughout the game. It's only 'intentional' on the part of the Process, as that was its function. The Camerata suffers a collective My God, What Have I Done? moment when the Process runs berserk.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: the Spine.
- Attack of the Monster Appendage: Also the Spine.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Using Help() as a passive command gives you a 25% chance of becoming a Superuser whenever you use Turn(), giving you access to the unique Kill() command that has the highest base damage in the game, but it can't be enhanced with support commands and using it once takes up your entire Turn(), meaning you can't perform any combos with it either. Borders on Annoying Video-Game Helper (or Annoying Video Game Help()er?) if you were lining up for a piercing attack like Breach(); you're out of luck since you can only use Kill() this turn and it explodes on first impact.
- Using Help() as a primary function has similar problems. The awesome: you can summon a Fetch, one of the most dangerous Processes, and upgrade it with oher functions to make it even more powerful. The impractical: once you exceed a very short distance from the pet, it unsummons. Yes, if you exceed this distance during a turn, despite ending the turn right next to the pet, it will still unsummon. The super super impractical: if you exceed the distance during your Turn(), your Turn() ENDS, AND you lose the pet. This pretty much makes Help() one of the most disruptive support enemies you could face in the game.
- Back from the Dead: When killed, Processes will drop a cell which can then be collected. If you fail to collect it, it will regenerate back into the Process you just killed. One Limiter can cause Processes to drop multiple cells, all of which respawn into the same enemy which spawned them. Younglady is an exception. When she is killed, she drops nearly a dozen cells with a regeneration rate half that of normal. All of them regenerate into Badcells if not collected. Badcells do not drop cells when killed in any situation.
- Back Stab: Attacking Processes from behind gives you bonus damage. Using Mask() as an upgrade further enhances this, and you also get a damage bonus on your first attack if you use Mask() to cloak yourself.
- Bittersweet Ending: After restoring part of Cloudbank, Red elects to kill herself with the Transistor so she'll be with her lover inside the Transistor.
- Bleak Level: Cloudbank as a whole slowly becomes this as it gets processed. Eventually Red returns to the Empty Set, and finds that almost the entire area has been processed, and by the time she gets to Fairview she finds it's been processed entirely.
- Blown Across the Room: What Crash() and Breach() can do, while Cull() will launch enemies into the air. These skills can be combined for even greater effect.
- Book-Ends: The game begins and ends at the same location with a corpse stabbed with the Transistor--the latter is Red's.
- Boring, but Practical:
- There's a lot of cool skills, but Crash() is by far the most useful standby you'll have. It has a decent attack speed, decent Turn() cost, stuns, synergizes well with most other functions, and its only drawback is short range.
- Jaunt() is simply a low cost dash move. Slap Help() into it and half your enemies will be busy clawing at decoys you left behind as you dance around like a bunny on crack. Put Load() into it and you'll be bombing Processes left and right just by moving. This'll cost you a fair bit of MEM, though. Alternatively, tack it on to any function as an upgrade. You now have a function which works during Turn() cooldown, which is practically indispensable in later battles when collecting Cells is imperative, and makes killing shielded Badcells much easier.
- Breakable Power-Up: If you take enough damage to empty the Life Meter, the equipped function using the most MEM is disabled (if this happens to be your only damage-dealing function, then the second-highest is taken instead). If you lose all four, it's Game Over. Disabled functions will regenerate after reaching two or more Save Points (depending on if Limiters are active).
- Bullfight Boss: Sybil fights by charging you with a massive parasol used as a spear.
- Cap: Your level is capped at 30, though it takes at least two playthroughs to reach it depending on your use of Limiters.
- Central Theme: Hubris, and the consequences of never looking back.
- Charm Person: Switch(). Charmed Processes can't be damaged by the player, and will switch back instantly if hit a second time.
- Chekhov's Gun: The very first terminal of the game talks about a potential project to build a bridge from Cloudbank to Fairview. Near the end of the game, Red and the Transistor end up building the bridge themselves to meet up with Royce.
- Chekhov's Skill: Red's Flourish ability causes the Transistor to fly out of her hands, which is fun to mess around with. She uses this ability at the very end of the game, operating the Transistor remotely in order to commit suicide.
- Cherry Tapping: Ping() does almost no damage, but has an extremely high attack speed and really low Turn() cost. It pairs well with Load() to trigger the bombs that program creates.
- City Noir: Cloudbank definitely has a lot of noir aesthetics.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: After defeating Sybil the third time, she starts to transform again and the Man in the Transistor warns you to be prepared for another fight. All that comes out of the transformation is a mortally wounded and completely harmless Sybil and several cores that never turn into enemies.
- Collision Damage: Cull() as a passive or Help() upgraded with Cull() allows Red or Luna, respectively, to inflict this during Turn().
- Combinatorial Explosion: Every new function you find has one of three uses: Active, Upgrade, or Passive. Active uses the function as a skill, either damage-dealing or support. Upgrade uses the function to enhance an active function, and Passive enhances Red herself. There are a total of 16 functions to choose from, so there's a lot of ways to mix and match. In New Game+, you unlock additional copies of the functions which allow you to stack them for even more combinations. The game even keeps track of which combinations you've actually used in battle, and each function needs to be used in each type of slot at least once to unlock the available backstory for that function.
- Continuing Is Painful: Played with. If you are killed, your highest MEM function is overloaded (unless it's your only damage-dealing function, which always overloads last), rendering it unusable, and your life bar is restored. Depending on how you've set yourself up, this can range from a mere annoyance to making the battle outright unwinnable. This is intentional and well-planned by the devs; the highest-cost function is lost first (most likely the favorite which the player dumped a bunch of powerful upgrades into), forcing players to equip and try out different functions at the next save point until the lost function is restored at a later save point. Losing a function you were relying on forces you to adapt your strategy, which gives you lots of chances to find the many hidden interactions and strategies in the game. It's also a vital component of the Mirror Boss fights. Both of them have multiple lives and will almost certainly take one of the player's functions through sheer attrition, so being able to sacrifice one is important unless you know how to win that battle without dying.
- Cool Bike: Red gets to ride one for a little while near the start of the game, and again on the return trip.
- Cosmic Horror Story: A group of Well Intentioned ExtremistsDug Too Deep and unleashed something beyond their understanding which they hoped to control, but end up consigning everyone and everything to inevitable destruction. It ends with Red technically winning, but Cloudbank is gone and she's the only one left alive, so she is Driven to Suicide.
- Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: Subverted, the Transistor wishes it would rain to help hide your tracks. However, Cloudbank's weather is controlled by public ballot and rain isn't even an option. Later on you get admin access to the city and can make it rain or snow.
- Cyberspace: Cloudbank itself is implied to be some sort of virtual reality, with the power to reshape itself through the will of the populace. As the Process spreads, doorways start spitting out computer errors, Cartesian coordinates for their endpoints, and hexadecimal file locations.
- Darker and Edgier: The game is noticeably darker than Bastion. While Bastion takes place After the End, Transistor puts the player right in the middle of the ongoing apocalypse as they get to watch everything fall apart around them. And unlike Bastion, nobody survives to the end of the game (or at least nobody survives unprocessed.)
- Dark Reprise: The game includes a few 'processed' versions of tracks, such as the version of 'In Circles' that plays during the fight with Sybil.
- Deadly Euphemism: It soon becomes clear that 'The Country' is a nice way of referring to the afterlife. Though, assuming Cloudbank is indeed some sort of virtual reality, it could simply be the offline world.
- Deflector Shield:
- Cheerleaders cover nearby enemies in these (or Red if she uses Switch() on one). Later versions can also shield themselves temporarily in addition to their targets.
- Red can get a one-hit shield that recharges after a while by using Bounce() as a passive function.
- Democracy Is Flawed:
- Everything in Cloudbank — from the weather to the color of the sky — is decided by public poll. This has left the city constantly changing to suit whatever whim the citizens have, and frequently left the less-well off at the mercy of a tyranny of the majority.
- Seems to be the motive of the Camerata, seeking to build a better system through the use of the Transistor and the Process, though the exact details are never revealed.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Most high MEM cost functions veer into this.
- Load() lets you plant a massively damaging bomb that eats up almost half your Turn() gauge in base form. But once you've got the hang of it, it's downright deadly. Use it to upgrade Mask() to perform explosive cloaking, turn it into status debuff mine with an increased blast radius, or use Crash() to chuck it at foes like a mortar.
- Ping() is practically useless on its own, as even with its high attack speed its damage is negligible. Paired with other functions, though, it becomes valuable support tool.
- Breach() has low attack speed and high turn cost, but also pierces destructible objects and does high damage. A bit impractical by itself, but rather useful as a modifier for other functions. Used with Turn(), it does massive backstab damage and can hit multiple targets. Used with Jaunt(), you literally run through enemies, flying across the battlefield as a living projectile.
- Doppelgänger: Each time you attack Younglady, it will Flash Step out of your way and create a 'shadow' in its place to prevent you from tearing it apart too easily. This also renders your Turn() only good for one or two backstabs at best, unless she's stunned.
- Duel Boss: The final boss is this. Royce is even able to use Turn(), mirroring Red's abilities completely. Agency tests also feature this kind of battle.
- Doppleganger Spin: Combining Jaunt() with Help() results in Red leaving behind decoy afterimages whenever she Flash Steps.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Red isn't able to stop the Process before they seemingly process the entire city and everyone inside it.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Evil is putting it a little strongly, but Grant and Asher seem to have been married, as they share the same last name and it doesn't at all seem to be due to blood relation. When Asher isn't using his messages to Motive Rant at Red, he's expressing concern for Grant. Some lines from Royce make it clear this was hardly one-sided devotion on Asher's part.'But Asher, he meant something to Grant. Really fueled his fire.'
- Fallen Princess: Red, who goes from famous singer to mute outcast in the game's opening section.
- Familiar: Luna acts as one.
- Fear Is the Appropriate Response: About 50 Cluckers show up to kill Red at one point. The Transistor's advice is succinct.
- Field of Blades: The final boss arena has copies of the Transistor in the background, all dropped into the ground blade-first at various angles. They scale up fractally, with a mountain-sized one filling the sky.
- Flash Step: Jaunt() when used as a primary function.
- Foreshadowing: The song 'We All Become' is basically the plot in musical form. Asher and Grant's fate also foreshadows how Red ends the story.
- Forgotten Phlebotinum: The game starts with the Man in the Transistor teleporting him and Red across the city. Too bad he never tries that again, as it would have been better than running all over the place.
- Gainax Ending: Where is the Cradle, exactly? Is it inside the Transistor? Is it the real world outside of Cloudbank? What exactly happens to trap you and Royce there? Why does one of you have to kill the other to escape? In a game that already explains itself very poorly, these questions have very elusive answers.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: The fact that your skills are functions explains why they can be used as upgrades to other functions despite being abilities themselves, since because they are literally representations of programming functions, it is entirely possible to use a function inside another function, causing the output of the outer function to be modified by the inner function (like an upgrade), while the inner function can be used by itself (like a skill). Some upgrades also refer to themselves as subroutines.
- Genre-Busting: The game's soundtrack, like that of its predecessor, is described as 'Old-World Electronic Post-Rock'.
- Gone Horribly Wrong:
- Royce Brackett found the Process was responsible for Cloudbank's ever-shifting nature, and drew it forth in its raw form. Then he let Grant borrow the Transistor, the Camerata targeted Red, and everything went to Hell.
- Sybil's profile implies that she knew Red wouldn't be alone, and that she intended for Red's friend toTake The Sword. Didn't anticipate them keeping it, though..
- Gray Goo: The Process is apparently responsible for the constant changes in Cloudbank behind the scenes, but when it was extracted, it began to convert everything into more of itself. Without the Transistor to guide it, it knows nothing more than to convert. Red has a chance to literally 'draw' a new future on said canvas, but decides to kill herself to be reunited with her friend.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: The Transistor is, essentially, a giant programming tool. That serves as a handy weapon and, in the later game, as a Reality Warper tool.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Man Process fires Action BombAttack Drones. The drones explode if damaged or if they connect with you, and the former property can be used to send them back at Man, which will take damage from the blast. Even better, Switch() can be used on the drones to cause them to actively hunt down and destroy their former owners.
- Hope Spot: After the final boss, Red is given the opportunity to rebuild the city, restoring it to her former glory with the Transistor. She doesn't.
- Implied Love Interest: The Man in the Transistor and Red.. well, until he flat out says it the end anyway.
- Improbable Use of a Weapon: Though the Transistor looks like a sword, Red never actually uses it as such. Even her most basic attack has her slamming it into the ground and firing a burst of energy from the eye on the side. The only time she uses it like a proper sword is when she impales herself with it at the end of the game.
- In Medias Res: The game abruptly starts right as Red pulls the Transistor out of her friend, with exposition kept a little vague thanks to averting As You Know. It isn't until Red returns to the Empty Set that the player finally sees the events that got them where they started at in the first place.
- Inside a Computer System: The Beach is implied to be this, as well as the last battle. The main city itself is ambiguously inside a computer system as well, or some form of digital reality that can be altered by programs.
- Interface Screw: Snapshots take pictures of Red during a fight, obscuring the screen. On higher levels they also black out parts of the screen with a Fog of War when Red enters Planning Mode.
- Invisible to Normals: Apparently only Red (and possibly the Camerata) can see things that have been processed, as late in the game, when several skyscrapers have been fully processed, there's a news story about them flat-out disappearing. Another possibility is that possessing the Transistor is what decides it.
- Insistent Terminology: They're not 'skills', they're 'functions'.
- In Their Own Image: The Camerata is trying to pull this. Red actually gets an opportunity to do so after Cloudbank's reduced to a 'blank canvas', with the Transistor as her 'brush', but she instead decides to catch up with her friend.. by killing herself and being integrated into the sword.
- Ironic Echo: 'Hello, world' when making your way into the city shortly after the beginning, enjoying the breathtaking view of the scenery. Shortly before the end, when returning to Where It All Began it gets echoed.. 'Hello, world. You don't look so good..', as the scenery has been grayed out and processed. Also doubles as a second, minor set of Book-Ends.
- Island Base: The Backdoor.
- Kill 'Em All: By the end of the game, Cloudbank is completely processed, with no confirmed survivors, and Red kills herself with the Transistor. The game still manages to pull a happy ending out of it, as she is now within the Transistor and lives with her lover in the Country.
- Letting the Air Out of the Band: Camerata terminals play the same startup sound as the regular ones, only to have this effect at the end.
- Life Drain: Tap() as an primary function or an upgrade heals you when you deal damage with that function. The amount is determined by the damage the function does and the number of hits (DoT functions like Purge() will heal small amounts at the same rate Purge() does damage, while single-hit functions like Tap() as a primary heal all at once).
- Lost Technology: Cloudbank has apparently existed for so long that the Process, the Transistor, and everything they do has been lost to time. Even the Camerata have only the barest understanding of how it works.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The ending suggests that this is what happens to people who are sucked into the Transistor, unless there's someone on the outside that they can connect with.
- Lowered Monster Difficulty: Averted. Processes level up throughout the game, gaining more HP and new abilities. Even very weak processes like Creeps become incredibly annoying or dangerous once they're powered up.
- MacGuffin Title: Also a One-Word Title. Named for the Transistor.
- Magic from Technology: All of the Transistor's Functions have names and parentheses like programming code functions. Among other things, the Transistor is meant to control the Process, which in gameplay takes the form of combat against the Process. You are figuratively typing out commands to terminate processes when you queue up moves during Turn(). But it all looks like you're casting magic spells.
- Maybe Ever After: Red and the Man in the Transistor. It's unknown what will happen from the end on.
- Mind Screw:
- Much like Bastion, major details about the story and setting are intentionally left vague and never elaborated on, leaving players to fill in the gaps.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon is this in spades. Nothing makes any sense, you are still running around going to unknown addresses, and you are listening to an estranged scientist rambling about a object all three of you know even less about.
- Special mention goes to an abyss with a listed depth of 'NaN'. NaN in programming is shorthand for Not a Number. Since you are actually upside down when this appears, it is likely referring to the sky.
- Minimalist Cast: Not quite to Bastion's extent, but there are seven characters in the entire game (not counting the couple of people that are processed into the Transistor at the start of the game), and one of them is a news reporter who never interacts with the other characters, one of them is transformed into a Process by the time you meet up with her, and another kills himself before the player can meet or even speak with him.
- Mirror Boss: The final boss, Royce, fights you with another Transistor. He can use Turn() like you can, can use all of your functions, and has four lives from a full set of functions. Agency tests employ the same mechanic.
- Mutually Exclusive Powerups: Once you enter New Game+ and start getting duplicate functions, you cannot use both copies of a function as an upgrade for another active function. You can, however, use a copy of a function to upgrade itself.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Despite the Mirror Boss mechanic, the final boss uses more functions than should technically be possible after several rounds. Additionally, the second you end your Turn() he immediately recharges his, which can lead to the boss executing two Turn()s almost in a row and makes functions like Purge() completely worthless. The same, of course, does not apply to you.
- Mythology Gag: Starting a 'recursive' run plays the first sentence spoken in the game in a distorted manner (and voiced by a different character). This is very similar to the New Game+ from Bastion. The Central Theme from Bastion occurs here again, only this time the player isn't even given the option to start over again, seeing that the protagonist is Driven to Suicide.
- Narrative Filigree: OVC terminals start off showing things like polls for the sky colour and weather, details about a cancelled game, and news about fashion week. These disappear once everything starts going to hell.
- Never Say 'Die': Most of the time dying is referred to as 'going to The Country'. The vagueness is further compounded by the game's lack of details about what kind of world (if any) exists outside of the city of Cloudbank.
- New Game+: The 'Recursion' system allows for replaying the game from the start of the story, retaining all your unlocks and giving you a chance for second grabs on your functions. The quirk here is that the Processes stay leveled up, so you end up fighting much stronger ones right from the start.
- Nobody Poops: Averted. As a one time deal, Red can use a washroom in the records hall. The Transistor lampshades that they have been running around for a while and he won't look while she does her business.
- No Cure for Evil: Averted. Weeds can repair any damaged Processes that come within range, and Processes will actively run to them if you damage them enough.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Pure white means there is nothing left, and is erased out of existence. The return 'Hello World' trip home 'amplifies this effectively.
- Obvious Rule Patch: As a general rule, Crash() as an upgrade causes a function to temporarily stun enemies and reduce their defense. However, if Crash() is applied to Ping(), the function with the fastest fire rate, only the second effect applies.
- One-Word Title: As MacGuffin Title, named after the Transistor.
- Orange/Blue Contrast: The cover of both the game and its soundtrack use this, with Red as the orange and the Transistor/skyline as the blue.
- Our Souls Are Different: The deceased and partially-processed people Red and the Transistor encounter leave behind floating blue cubes called Traces, which the Transistor can communicate with and absorb to unlock new functions. In software programming, a trace is a step-by-step log of a program's execution, used for debugging and troubleshooting.
- Over Drive: The core feature of the game. Using the Transistor's Turn() function, Red has the power to slow time to a standstill, plan out the next few seconds, and perform attacks/dodge at lightning-speed for those few seconds. The drawback is that doing this will cause all of Red's attacks and Turn() itself to go on cooldown; the time it takes to recharge depends on how much Red did during Turn(), up to five seconds if you used the whole bar. Jaunt() bypasses this restriction, either as a primary function or as an upgrade for other functions.
- Powers as Programs: The 'Functions'.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The Processes, but subverted with Red's friend inhabiting the Transistor, who's a pretty good guy. When his eye starts glowing, it's certainly a warning.. but the danger isn't the Transistor, its a gigantic Process called the Spine causes the Transistor to screw up somehow just by being in the area.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: The basic premise of the plot is Red tracking down the people who stole her voice and killed her friend.
- Save Point: Access points, which also allow the player to adjust their Function and Limiter arrangement. The game also saves when Red enters a new area.
- Scenery Porn: Rampant. Cloudbank, whether abandoned, in disrepair, or slowly being integrated, is one jawdropping sight.
- See You in Hell: 'See you in the country' is a somewhat less insulting version of this, apparently. It's the last thing that Asher says to Red in recording after he suicides, and she types it right back at him.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: Similar to the idols from Bastion, you can apply Limiters to the game. These give you an experience boost, but make the game more difficult in various ways.
- Sequential Boss: Sybil, Royce, and the Mirror Boss challenge in the Backdoor room need to be defeated several times before they finally die.
- Shout-OutTo Shakespeare: The words 'The Country' pop up repeatedly throughout the story, in reference to a place where people go and never return from. Sounds innocuous at first, but it takes on a darker meaning if you recall Hamlet, and then consider why people might be 'evacuating to the Country' ahead of the Process.
- Shout-Out:
- The Bracket Towers Maintenance Section has the code 0451, which is famously used as the initial door code in System Shock, and many games referencing this since. (Which is itself a reference to Fahrenheit451.)
- Red has toys of a Windbag and a Cael Hammer in her apartment.
- In a track 'She Shines' has a set of lyric that could be a nod to Blade Runner.'Lost in the cloud, like tears in the rain.'
- Shrink Ray: Enemies hit by Void() will shrink, applying a debuff which causes them to take 100% more damage with each hit. Stack it up to three times to make them tiny!
- Sigil Spam: Yellow upside-down triangles appears on Red's dress, the back of Red's friend's jacket, and in the Empty Set.
- Soul Jar: The Transistor 'absorbs' the consciousness of the recently deceased, who then become new abilities called functions.
- Spanner in the Works: Red's friend, the Man in the Transistor and source of the Breach() function, completely upends the antagonists' plans by getting killed and processed by the weapon instead of Red. He takes it over and uses it to save Red, who then takes it for herself and uses its power against them.
- Summon Magic: Basically what the Help() function is. It lets you summon a friendly Fetch named Luna. This can be upgraded to summon two. It can also summon Bad Cells when used as an upgrade.
- Sword Drag: The Transistor is so huge that Red has to drag it along with her, leaving a shower of sparks as she goes.
- Take Cover!: Encouraged. Several enemies can't see through it — others can, though. And a few can break it down.
- Take Your Time: Sometimes the Man in the Transistor will prompt Red to Continue Your Mission, Dammit!, but at least he's a lot more polite than most NPCs would be.
- Taking the Bullet: Red's nameless friend gets trapped in the Transistor when he pushes Red out of its path.
- The Un-Reveal: It's possible to catch the tail end of Royce explaining his theory of the true nature of the Transistor, just as you emerge from one of the backdoor areas. Despite the Transistor's request, he declines to repeat himself.
- Theme Naming: Many things in the game are named after computer or mathematical terms, like the Empty Set, Raster Plaza and the Backdoor, or the authorities being called admins. Attacks and skills in planning mode are stylized like names of functions in (most) programming languages. Transistor says 'Hello world' at one point near the beginning. Cloudbank itself could be interpreted as meaning a data bank for cloud computing, given all of its digital influences.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
- The game notifies you of this when you're about to do excessive damage to an enemy during planning mode,◊ as it could be better spent on killing other things. If you stack up enough damage the UI replaces the 'OVERKILL!' indicator with an incredulous, 'DO YOU EVEN READ' and shortly afterward, 'YOU ARE MEAN', and the Transistor will sometimes comment on Red's ruthlessness after you execute an overkill attack. Despite this, it can be worthwhile to pile on a little overkill, as the game only predicts damage based on current position and it is not 100% accurate.
- One achievement requires doing 2048 damage in the practice arena in a single use of Turn(). The total health of the five enemies within is only 1750. As for an upper limit, you can do just above 100,000 damage with the right build.
- Together in Death:
- Red and the Man in the Transistor meet in The Country in the end.
- Asher and Grant share the same fate.'Asher: We always said that if we were to fail, we would do so together, as one. See you in the Country.
- This is really taken Up to Eleven if you believe that the Transistor takes the souls and sends them somewhere called the Country to live ever after.
- Tron Lines:
- The Transistor's glowing blade is reminiscent of a printed circuit board, and many explosions and other effects created by the Transistor make lines of energy that flow in grid patterns across the ground.
- Red's dress and the Man in the Transistor's jacket have glowing yellow triangles on the back.
- The Unfought:
- Two members of the Camerata, Grant and Asher, are never actually fought, having committed suicide just before Red could reach them. Especially surprising in regards to Grant, who was played up as the main antagonist in both the launch trailer and the game itself. He never gets a single line of dialogue.
- The second iteration of the Spine is never fought. Its tail just harasses you for a few sections.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Sybil. She tries to pull a Murder the Hypotenuse by having the Camerata target Red without telling them that her friend would be there with her, expecting him to die protecting her. Her plan works, but she didn't count on the man hijacking the Transistor and using it to teleport Red to safety, kickstarting the game's plot.
- Variable Mix:
- The music becomes more muted when Red enters Planning Mode, and sometimes humming is added in. The player can also control this with a key that causes Red to start humming when not in battle. The official soundtrack includes versions of tracks both with and without Red's humming accompaniment!
- The boss fight with Sybil starts out with In Circles playing, then as the fight goes on it slowly shifts in a more distorted, electronic 'processed' version. It's implied that Sybil is the one singing, becoming more distorted as she becomes more processed.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Camerata were fed up with how ephemeral Cloudbank had become, constantly changing according to the whims of its citizens (right down to the weather and even the color of the sky). Unfortunately, their plan to put a stop to that went out of control and triggered The End of the World as We Know It.
- Wham Line:
- When you finally fight Royce:Royce:So, who gets to go first? How about.. me. (Boots up his own Turn())
- The first line spoken in the recursion is the same line as when you first start up the game: 'Hey Red.. We're not getting away with this, are we?'. However, there is one key difference that completely changes the premise of the game. Instead of being spoken by Mr. Nobody, it's spoken by Royce.
- When you finally fight Royce:
- Where It All Began: Tracking down Royce takes Red back to where she first got the Transistor.
- World Building: A surprising amount of information regarding Cloudbank can be discovered from OVC terminals, Trace profiles, and asides in characters' dialogue.
- You Are in Command Now: Near the end of the game, Red gets admin access to all the city's functions. Not because she's earned it, but because by this point there are literally two living people in the entire city. She's an admin because there's no one left.
- You Are Worth Hell: In the ending, Red and her friend got absorbed by the Transistor, and now live happily in the Country.
- Your Soul Is Mine: Every time you grab a trace from some poor dead person, you are essentially stealing their soul. The Man in the Transistor gets some minor satisfaction out of absorbing and exploiting Grant and Asher for all the trouble they've caused.
- You Will Not Evade Me: The main purpose of Get() in all its forms. As a primary function, any enemy you hit with it is dragged to you. As an upgrade, it adds an attracting effect to the function (Void(), for example, essentially turns into a debuffing black hole). If installed as passive, it will make you draw in dropped Cells faster and from further away. Higher-level Creeps have a Get() like effect as part of their beams, and higher-level Jerks have a copy of the Get() function that they'll use on you at regular intervals.
- Zerg Rush: Switch(), when upgraded with Help() and Spark(), has a very amusing effect. When it makes contact with an enemy, all three Switch beams will spawn a dozen or so allied Bad Cells.
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Index
'Jesus, how much longer is this?' I texted my friend, putting down the PlayStation 4 controller to pause Transistor.
'I think I'm just bad at video games,' I added.
'About 5 hours maybe,' he wrote back, laughing in the way that one makes clear through a text message. He had finished the whole thing in that amount of time.
I wasn't writing him because I was unhappy playing Transistor, the long-awaited second act from Bastioncreator Supergiant Games. If anything, I was texting him because I was enjoying it too much.
I usually play video games slowly. But even by my molasses-like standards, I could tell I was advancing through Transistor at a sluggish pace—seeking out every possible nook and cranny of its gorgeously opaque world to find more hints about what had happened to Red, the silent and mysterious protagonist. More often than that, I was reveling in the infectious joy of poking and prodding around the game's combat system. Every time I discovered a new ability, I would dart back to the game's training grounds as soon as I could to put it through the ringer.
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This had landed me in a deadline-driven panic. I came home after work one night last week to defeat what I thought was a final boss, only to realize I wasn't even halfway through.
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'Maybe I should stop playing with so many limiters,' I wrote to him, referring to a set of modules you unlock that increase the difficulty of the combat in various ways and its ensuing rewards.
'Dude why are you using those!!' he responded. 'No wonder!'
Part of me wanted to take all the process limiters away, to make the rest of Transistor a walk in the park so I could spend the weekend enjoying the all-too rare glimpse of the sun we had in New York City. But I couldn't bring myself to. As I acquired more limiters, I would lay them on top of the ones I already had. This wasn't to punish or prove anything to myself. I kept making the game harder, I eventually realized, because I didn't want it to end.
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It's nice when a game is beautiful, which Transistor is. It's even better when its story is moving and gracefully presented as well, which Transistor's is. But I always know it's a sign of something special when a game is so much fun that just playing through its practice rounds and time trials feels like a treat. Those are the levels I started playing the moment I'd finished Pikmin 3, the stages I worked towards eagerly when I wasn't ready to be done with Super Mario 3D World, the ones I'm still playing in Gears of War 3 for some compulsive reason.
Transistor is a smaller, more tightly framed experience than any of those games. But its diminutive stature just makes it feel like more of a triumph considering the league in which I'd place it. Pikmin is a great point of comparison, actually, because like that Nintendo classic, Transistor creates a riff on an established genre that feels so novel it risks becoming eccentric, even off-putting for new players.
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For Pikmin, that's real-time strategy. Transistor takes on a far more peculiar beast: the action role-playing game. I don't really know what that mouthful means at this point, but the way Supergiant handles the hybrid genre is far more interesting, and far more rewarding, than Bastion ever was.
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I want to focus on the combat here because, again, I'm scared that curious gamers might be dissuaded by obtuse jargon or vague promises if I just say that Transistor combines elements of real-time action RPG gameplay with tactical turn-based maneuvers. It does do that, and it does so expertly. But it's also a rare example of a game that picks and chooses motifs from other titles to make something that feels wholly new.
It uses a script, so the mod cannot be installed more than one sub-folder deep. This mod was written and tested on Windows for The Sims 4 version 1.51.75 (April 16, 2019). It should be compatible with any stuff or game packs and other mods (even other No Autonomy mods). Sims 4 no autonomous mods.
The majority of Transistor's gameplay is split into two parts. There's the real-time portion where you're running around a dystopic science fiction city known as Cloudbank. It's a desolate place that reminds of what I loved about the original BioShock—a haunting, roomy space that hums with mystery of the regrets of people who once lived there, and the unhealthy obsessions of those who still do. I don't want to delve into the story because Transistor spins a thread that's difficult to pull on without disassembling the whole thing. So I'll just say that before everything went down in Cloudbank, Red was a famous singer. The game begins with her, now without a voice, pulling a giant talking sword (the eponymous transistor, voiced by Bastion narrator Logan Cunningham) out of a man's chest and trying to figure out what exactly went wrong.
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Before long, Red is beset on all sides by killer robots. This is where the second part of Transistor's gameplay comes in, the so-called 'planning mode.' With the tap of a button (R2 for the PS4), you enter into a stasis that feels like it was pulled straight out of XCOM: Enemy Unknown down to the level of the thin, militaristic reticles that plot out your moves. You have a finite amount of energy that can be used to walk around the map, attack bad guys, or use other abilities.
As with many turn-based games, you can revise your plan up until the point that you execute it. Once you do, there's no turning back. With another press of the button, time revs up and Red whips around the map at a blinding speed. Her enemies do their best to react.
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Here's a video showing how I slowly (but surely!) wrapped my head around using the planning mode to its full effect in one of the game's challenge levels. You can almost hear the gears turning in my head as I get closer and closer to connecting the dots:
Your enemies aren't this patient in the main game, however. They meet your advances with a calculated efficiency, which is where things start to get really interesting. Because unlike a game like XCOM or any number of turn-based RPGs that I've played recently, the bad guys in Transistor aren't content to just sit around and let you pummel them for a full 'turn.' Once you give Red the green light, they begin whipping around the map as well.
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At first this is just irritating, like swatting away small flies. But pretty soon, even the smallest hiccup in your plan leads to serious problems. There's a cool-down period between Red's turns, during which she's much slower and weaker than most opponents. Some abilities can be used before you fully recharge, but for the most part you spend this time running to cover and trying to avoid hostile projectiles as best you can.
All of this creates a diverse set of challenges. I found the wraith-like enemy class known as 'Young Lady' to be particularly tricky, for instance, because she has this infuriating ability to teleport instantaneously when you land your first blow. With most enemies, you can chart a rough trajectory and aim your attacks accordingly. But the Young Lady still manages to take my by surprise well into the new game plus mode.
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Take this moment I started to capture because I was trying to get a good clip of guiding Red gracefully to victory. There were only a few bad guys left, I thought. This won't be that hard.
Well, here's how it turned out:
The end of that clip shows one of my favorite parts of Transistor's combat. Rather than just letting you die outright, the game devises a far more clever punishment: each time your health is completely drained, you lose one of your abilities. You can't get it back until you've survived another fight or two either.
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What I love about this isn't that the combat is invigorating, or even that its distinctive combination of real-time and, er, not real-time motions captures both the nail-biting tension of XCOM and the hedonistic joy of running around and breaking things in a game like Diablo III. It's the way that Transistor is constantly pushing you to think on your feet, to master any new plan of attack no matter how limited your repertoire, or how crazily desperate your actions might be.
The enemies evolve in turn. Roving drone-like bots with cameras mounted on their heads start out by splattering a large picture of Red on the screen to distract you, but by the end of the game they're creating a fog of war that blocks your entire field of vision of planning mode. Others spawn fungal-like material on the ground or lay down force fields that pull you out of planning mode entirely. The process limiters that you're handed as you level up exaggerate these subtle shifts by, say, making enemies more powerful, limiting the available space you have to equip abilities, or extending cool-down period.
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The reason I liked playing Transistor with all of these enabled is because the increased challenge encouraged me to use every one of Red's powers to the best of her abilities—and mine. By the time I put down my DualShock 4 to write this review, I'd unlocked 16 powers. These range from a number of different ranged, melee, and area-damaging attacks to others that let you warp a few feet in any direction (Jaunt) or convert your enemies temporarily (Switch). You can only use four of these as attack moves at any given time, which can be assigned to slots that match to each of the controller's symbol-faced buttons. The remainder can be slotted in below your attack moves as upgrades or assigned to Red as passive abilities.
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Transistor doesn't do much to teach how all of this works. But that makes the process of discovering it yourself all the better. It's a cyberpunk fiction about hacking into an overarching malicious IT superstructure, after all. Learning how to manipulate the system to work in your favor is part of the fun. Fairly early on, I learned that upgrading Jaunt with Switch made the time between my plans a recklessly delightful gamble of lunging towards a group of enemies only to see them turn on themselves a moment later. Upgrading a ricocheting projectile (Bounce) with a damage amplifier (Void) and scattershot attack (Spark) turned it into an enormously powerful explosive like the banana bombs from Worms Armageddon.
And that's not even getting into using different abilities in sequence. I didn't appreciate how powerful a slow-moving ball of energy (Flood) was until I figured out I could use another lassoing ability (Get) to pull enemies into its path—something I only realized when I was so low on available powers I picked those two out of sheer necessity.
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The endless combining and experimenting only gets deeper from there. As your plans become more complex and attenuated, actually managing to pull them off feels better and better in turn. The first time I used Load to deposit a bomb in the center of a group of bad guys, Jaunt-ed away to escape its blast radius, and then shot the thing to detonate it felt like I'd just lived through the entire plot of some epic spy movie in the span of a few seconds.
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This all may sound dry and mechanical. And Transistor is one of those games that asks you to meet its challenges as if you're staring down a giant spreadsheet. But your mastery over the transistor's abilities mirrors Red's growing attachment with the voice embedded within it in a profound way. You slowly start to learn about the history between these two, the love they once shared and wish they could again.
In the moments when Red first plunges into her planning stasis, everything gets eerily quiet for a fleeting moment. Then her voices rises up with a deep, rich timbre. She's not singing, only humming, but it's beautiful all the same. This is where she can still come to life, I thought the first time this happened. This is where she still holds some power.
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Was there any doubt, then, that once I'd finished Transistor I would do anything other than start it all over again? I want to go back to the practice room and test out my new stealth power, I told myself.
I'd fallen in love with the sword too.
To contact the author of this post, write to [email protected] or find him on Twitter at @YannickLeJacq.
$begingroup$This term, we will be designing an audio amplifier. So far in our lecture, we are still at BJT and based from what I've heard, FETs will just be partly discussed unlike the thorough one on BJT. Anyway, I would like to have an idea this early so I can plan on what transistor to use for best audio amplification. I have read some threads how the other transistor (BJT/FET) is better, but other forums say that the performance relies not on the component but on how the transistor is properly biased and how the circuit is properly designed.
In designing an audio amplifier, which of the four subtypes of transistors is the most efficient? (NPN/PNP/JFET/MOSFET)
By the way, the requirement of my professor is just this: impress me. Right now my group haven't decided yet on the specifics of the circuit (wattage, impedance, etc).
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$endgroup$4 Answers
$begingroup$You could successfully build a audio amp from many different types of BJTs. It will be the circuit, not the transistor, that makes the amp work well. I'd pick jellybean parts like the 2N4401 (NPN) and 2N4403 (PNP) and stick with them for everything except for the final power output transistors. Lots of parts could fill that role. If you have your own favorite jellybean small signal transistors, use them if you prefer. The ones I mentioned have reasonable gain and can handle up to 40 V, which should be plenty good enough to allow for a amp to impress your profesor with.
There are lots of possible power transistors to use as the final output. If you are aiming for a few Watts, I'd probably go with basic parts like the TIP41 (NPN) and TIP42 (PNP).
Again though, it's not the choice of transistor that will make or break this project. You can certainly create a impressive audio amp with the transistors I mention, but you can also make a mess. It's really up to the design. In audio, overall noise and harmonic distortion are high priorities. Those come from careful circuit design and attention to these parameters at every step along the way.
You can also use other types of transistors, like JFETs or MOSFETs. Those would require a different circuit topology to utilize properly, but can be used to make a good amp too. Since you will be going over BJT details more thoroughly, I'd stick to them for now. This will be a great learning exercise. Designing a amp with very low noise and very low distortion is not trivial.
Olin LathropOlin Lathrop286k3131 gold badges355355 silver badges808808 bronze badges
$endgroup$$begingroup$You will probably make a more effective power output stage using BJTs for the same number of components compared to MOSFETs. I use the word effective to mean that your output voltage will swing higher/bigger for the same power supply with BJTs used in a simple push-pull circuit. This is because, to turn-on a BJT, you only need about 0.6 to 0.7V whereas to get a MOSFET supplying several hundred milliamps you might need to drive its gate with 3 or 4 volts.
Again, this will be a simple emitter-follower push-pull class AB output stage. You can only drive the output transistors with a signal that is restricted to the power rails and if this is (say) 24V dc - you should be able to drive a signal that is 22Vp-p to the power transistors. Given that each BJT would 'lose' 0.7 volts (because of the base emitter junction), the maximum output voltage will be about 20.6 volts peak to peak. If you were using mosfets, it would be more like 14 volts peak to peak into a decent load.
There is a bit of hand-waving in my answer so far but, just do your homework on mosfets connected as a source follower and pick one with the smalled Vgs(threshold) and examine the data sheet to see how much gate drive voltage is needed to get a few hundred milliamps flowing through it.
There are more complex designs that are quite difficult to get working where the output transistors are collector-connected or drain-connected but, for a beginner I'd stay away from these because they will be unstable if not carefully designed and, require more silicon to get working effectively.
So, given that you haven't specified power output, speaker load or voltage rails I'd say a BJT power output stage is probably the best choice. As for the other transistors I'd stick with BJTs - they've been used in tens of thousands of good commercial designs. You could of course consider a class A output stage using an output transformer - this is probably worth considering but the down-side is the loss in efficiency due to the final transistor biasing.
I've just had a look around for a fairly simple output stage that shows the biasing arrangement you'll likely need for a decent amplifier and came across this one: -
It came from this site. I'm recommending it because it seems to have a decent spec and the site also recommends a cut-down version without the diodes/biasing. I personally think it would be a good start for a beginner. The site discusses several things about what is needed to make a good output stage.
You can take the basic design and add gain to it and swap the op-amp out for individual transistors if you do a bit more research.
Andy akaAndy aka249k1111 gold badges193193 silver badges445445 bronze badges
$endgroup$$begingroup$This is a bit of a late answer, but I'm hoping it may help someone asking the same questions.
I prefer BJTs, but MOSFETs are super easy to use and can outperform BJTs in terms of fidelity. Both can give excellent results, just use what you find you prefer. MOSFETs can generally handle higher supply voltages (higher max Vds). So design with what you feel most comfortable with (calculation wise) and if you feel equally comfortable with both, use random.org.
To add to what Andy aka said, just know that you will need to have a very complex design to get 0.7V under each rail as your output swing. This is because the amplifier stage of a BJT amplifier also needs the signal to drive it which normally cuts one of the rails' voltage down by roughly 10% (don't quote me on that number, it's just a general rule of thumb I use). And I don't think an op-amp amplifier will impress a professor. At least where I studied I would have failed outright had I used an op-amp. And besides, the maximum you can get out of one (with a carefully designed driver stage) is 18 W into 8 ohms - this using an NE5532 if I remember correctly. In general you're only looking at 10-15 W with an op amp. Firstly, an op amp requires 5 minutes to design and secondly the power is dismal.
And to add, using two diodes to bias a BJT output stage isn't particularly the best idea, unless you match your diodes and transistors perfectly and thermally connect the diodes and the output transistors. BJT amplifiers are very susceptible to thermal runaway. You'll probably find in practice that you end up with very high bias current if you use normal signal diodes. Use rectifier diodes if you're going to be using diodes - 1N4001.
Marc KMarc K
$endgroup$$begingroup$Define 'performance'. Why are you interested in 'efficiencey'? Transistors are used in audio amplifiers in different ways. You have discrete class-a circuits that overdrive well like the infamous Neve console mic pre. On paper an op amp designs will have the best performance (actually putting separate transistors in front of a conventional op amp is probably going to get close to the theoretical limit of performance). But more generally you have input transistors, gain transistors and output transistors.
Input transistors should be low noise. BJT tend to be lower noise if the correct source impedance (for op amps you can look this up in the datasheet by looking at voltage noise / current noise which for NE5534A at 30Hz is ~5.5/0.0015 = 3k7). JFET has super low current noise so they will tend to have better noise performance with high Z inputs.
Gain transistors should be low noise and high gain. I'm not sure about what makes a good output transistor. Bandwidth or thermal characteristics maybe.
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$endgroup$protected by Community♦Oct 24 '18 at 11:35
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