Biasing the Op-Amp into Class A
The MINT board allows you to use a CRD to bias the op-amps into class
A. (See this article for more information on
this topic.) I recommend that you use one in the 0.5 to 2 mA range for
most op-amps. The 1.1 mA 1N5298 is the canonical CRD for the MINT. There
is a wide range of other values in that series available from several
manufacturers.
If you don't have access to this line of CRDs, there are other
lines mentioned in the article I linked to above. If none of those are
available or suitable to your purpose, don't worry about it; this is
not a night-and-day improvement anyway.
Increasing the Bandwidth of the Buffers
Most of what you need to know about this subject is covered in the
BUF634 datasheet. The bandwidth resistor referred to in the datasheet is
called R11 in the MINT circuit.
One important thing to note is that there is less space on the
board for R11 than for the other resistors. Its pin spacing is only
200 mils. Standard 1/8W resistors are small enough to work with this
pin pitch. If you're using Vishay-Dale RN55 series resistors for the
other positiions, don't be confused that they're specified as 1/8W;
at moderate temperatures they are in fact 1/4W resistors, so they are
big enough to require 300 mil pin spacing.
Before you put something in R11, be sure you understand how this
will affect the current draw of your amp. If you simply jumper the R11
position, current draw per buffer increases tenfold! Since the MINT is
intended for portable use, I envision the vast majority of MINT amps
having nothing in R11, and the minority having some resistor here so
that you don't increase current draw too much.
Some people have done testing and have found that this resistor
shouldn't be lower than 220 Ω for best sound. That's right:
shorting R11 is actually worse sounding than having a small resistor
value here. The highest useful value is probably 4.7 KΩ.