Suggestions For Discovering The Ideal Audio Amplifier

I will look at a few audio amplifiers as well as mini amplifier models and explain some fundamental vocabulary to help you select the best amp for your speakers

There is a flood of different audio amplifiers available which all differ in their specifications, shape and size. By following some plain rules, you will be able to pick the type that best meets your application and resources.

Amplifiers differ in their size and range from models that will take up a good portion of your living room while a number of of the latest mini amplifier types are as small as a deck of cards. Numerous units will be the size of a standard audio rack so that you can easily stack it on top of your audio equipment.

The huge majority of recent audio amps are solid state amplifiers vs more conventional tube amplifiers. Tube amplifiers have been prevalent a decade or so ago. Tube amplifiers, though, have a rather large level of harmonic distortion. Harmonic distortion refers to how much the audio signal is degraded whilst being amplified. This term is often used while evaluating the audio quality of amps.

An audio distortion of up to 10% is typical for tube amps whereas solid-state amps have lower audio distortion depending on the particular technology. The most conventional amplifiers utilize a “Class-A” and “Class-AB” technology. These amplifiers are also called “analog amplifiers”. This technology provides relatively low audio distortion. However, the power efficiency is only 10 to 30%. This means that most of the electrical power supplied to the amp is wasted as heat while a small fraction is used to amplify the audio signal.

Another technology is named “Class-D”. This technology offers much greater power efficiency than analog amplifiers, usually around 80 to 90%. “Class-D” amplifiers are also named “digital amplifiers”. The downside is that digital amps regularly have higher audio distortion than analog amps. This is for the most part a consequence of the switching distortion of the output power stage. Newest digital audio amplifiers, on the other hand, utilize a feedback mechanism and can reduce the audio distortion to below 0.05%.

When choosing an amplifier, ensure that the output power is sufficient to drive your speakers. The required power will be determined by how much power your loudspeakers can tolerate as well as the size of your room where you will be listening. Speaker power handling ability is specified as peak power and average power. The peak power value refers to how much power the speaker can handle for a short period of time whilst the average power handling value denotes how much power you can drive the speaker at continuously without harm.

If your listening environment is fairly small then you might not need to drive your speaker to its rated power handling value. You would almost certainly be ok having an amp that can deliver 20 to 50 Watts while your loudspeakers might be able to handle 100 Watts of power. Note however that speakers differ in their sensitivity. Usually a low-impedance speaker will be simpler to drive to high volume than a high-impedance speaker. Be certain that your amp can drive your loudspeaker impedance. You can without problems find the rated speaker impedance range in your amplifier’s user manual.

Other essential parameters are the signal-to-noise ratio and frequency response which should be in the order of at least 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio and 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency response for high-quality amps.