Information For Purchasing The Best Audio Amplifier

If you have paid a good amount of cash on a pair of good-quality loudspeakers, you wish to be certain that you get an audio amplifier that will offer brilliant audio quality while meeting your budget. I will present a number of tips on the subject of audio amp devices to aid you make the right purchasing decision.

It is difficult to pick the right audio amplifier as a result of the large number of types. All of these models have different specs. They are based on different technologies and come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. By following some plain suggestions, you will be able to select the model that best fits your application and budget.

Amplifiers vary in their size and range from types that will take up a good portion of your living room while several of the latest mini amplifier types are as tiny as a deck of cards. A big number of amps are the size of a regular rack. This allows your amp to be stacked on top of your other audio equipment.

The largest part of recent audio amps are based on solid-state technology whereas a tiny portion is based on tube technology which has been popular over a decade ago. However, tube amps have rather high audio distortion. Audio distortion refers to how much the audio signal is being degraded whilst passing through the amp and is specified in percent. This value is frequently used when comparing the audio quality of amplifiers.

Harmonic distortion of tube amps is frequently as large as 10%. Solid-state amplifiers will have lower audio distortion. Still, distortion will depend on the specific audio amplifier technology. The most traditional amplifiers use a "Class-A" and "Class-AB" technology. These amplifiers are also labeled "analog amplifiers". This technology provides fairly small audio distortion. However, the power efficiency is merely 10 to 30%. This means that most of the electrical power supplied to the amplifier is wasted as heat whereas a tiny fraction is utilized to amplify the audio signal.

In contrast, "Class-D" amps which are also known as "digital amplifiers" have a power efficiency of usually 80 to 90%. This permits the amplifier and power supply to be made a great deal smaller than analog amplifiers. The downside is that many digital amps have larger audio distortion than analog amplifiers though a few of the latest models employ a feedback mechanism to minimize distortion to levels of 0.05% and below.

When choosing an amplifier, make sure that the output power is adequate to drive your speakers. The required power will be determined by how much power your speakers can handle as well as the size of your space where you will be listening. Loudspeaker power handling is given as peak power which describes the greatest amount of power during short bursts while average power refers to how much power the loudspeakers can tolerate constantly.

If your listening area is fairly small then you might not require to drive your loudspeaker to its rated power handling value. You would most likely be ok having an amp that can deliver 20 to 50 Watts while your loudspeakers may be able to handle 100 Watts of power. Loudspeakers on the other hand differ in their impedance and sensitivity. As a rule of thumb speakers with low impedance offer higher sensitivity. High-sensitivity speakers are easier to drive to high volume than low-sensitivity loudspeakers. Be sure that your amp can drive your speaker impedance. You can without difficulty find the rated speaker impedance range in your amplifier’s user manual.

Additional vital 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.