High Fidelity audio amp IC for battery powered projects.

[jonovid]

what is the best 200Mw audio amp IC for  4 to 6 volt battery powered projects?.
without the need for boost converters.
I am looking for a high fidelity alternative to the LM386
to drive 8 or 4 ohm 1watt to 200Mw speaker and or up to 30 ohms Headphones.
be ether stereo or mono  or mono bridged output.
either stereo or mono IC is ok.
I am looking at a single chip solution here with audio analog input gain up to 200 .
this can be SMD , but I prefer DIP packages.
will not be damaged by hot-plugging or open circuit at the output when powered up.
by disconnecting the speaker  swapping out the load  or plugging in Headphones
must have good high fidelity  - low distortion 
 run from 4 to 6 volts

I have some PAM8408  audio amp
 8403 PAM8403 stereo filterless Class-D audio amplifier models. 
 
they say its 3watt. way more them I need for the job.
here is the ic datasheet
https://www.diodes.com/assets/Datasheets/PAM8408.pdf

[tooki]

I’ve tested the PAM 8403 and 8406 (IIRC) amps, and while I wouldn’t call them great, they’re perfectly adequate for non-demanding applications.

Just bear in mind that most Class D amps, like these, use differential speaker outputs, and you cannot simply bridge the two negative speaker outputs to create the ground of a headphone jack. You must use a resistor network as shown here: https://www.edn.com/design/analog/4313726/Add-headphones-to-a-Class-D-amplifier

I’ve tried that circuit with the PAM amps and it works fine.

[L_Euler]

I've had really good luck with TI TPA6021A4 2W stereo amplifier chips. 

[JustMeHere]

 TI has a whole lineup of very good audio AMPs.  ESP32 might be worth looking at.

[Audioguru again]

You know what an amplifier does when its volume control is set too high? It clips and produces lots of distortion.

An LM386 produces fairly low distortion of 0.2% at 200mW into an 8 ohm speaker when powered from 6V. At 10% distortion its output is 325mW so it has 125mW more distortion. Its output into 4 ohms is about the same.
A PAM8403 produces 0.08% distortion at 1.2W per channel into an 8 ohm speaker when powered from 5V. At 10% distortion its output is 1.8W into 8 ohms or 3.2W into 4 ohms.

[floobydust]

Important to note is Class D amplifiers generate strong EMI and are not usable in radio or other applications needing something electrically quiet. The PAM8403 datasheet radiated emissions graph is from 30-1000MHz and expect surprises below that range. PAM8403 is "filterless" but in reality you'd add some EMI filtering on the outputs. Too bad it won't run on 6V batteries.