On a sunny day (1 Mar 2020 00:57:14 GMT) it happened Robert Riches
 wrote in :

>
>On the last statement: I can confirm that a CMOS inverter does
>make a pretty decent analog amplifier for some purposes.  In the
>latter 1970s, while a freshman studying EE, I used CMOS part
>number 4449 inverters (balanced current drive) as analog gain
>elements for an integrated stereo amplifier.  I think it was an
>article in Popular Electronics that gave me the idea.  IIRC, the
>article showed that unity gain was around 1 MHz with a 15V power
>supply.  For audio purposes, the inverters worked very well.

Yes it works, been there done that, but it is no HiFi etc etc,
avoid it!

In those days the LM380 was a much better choice, real power amp,
just got a bunch from ebay a few month ago, still available

The issue of using logic gates with half-way input voltage may indeed
cause excessive power consumption.

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