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Choosing a good audio amplifier for your speakers is not a trivial job. You want to make certain that your amp matches your loudspeakers. I will clarify some simple amplifier terms and give some recommendations to help you choose the perfect amplifier. Audio amplifiers appear in all different shapes and sizes. They employ different technologies and have countless technical specs. By following some plain guidelines, you will be able to select the model that best meets your application and budget. Amplifiers differ in their size and range from types that will take up a good part of your living room whilst some of the newest mini amplifier types are as small as a deck of cards. Various amplifiers are rack sized. This permits them to be stacked on top of your other audio equipment. There are some core amplifier technologies available. One technology is referred to as "solid-state". Solid-state amps now make up for the greater part of audio amplifiers. In the past, tube amplifiers have been popular. Even today tube amplifiers are still available. Unfortunately, tube amplifiers have relatively large audio distortion which describes how much the audio signal is degraded by the amp. Harmonic distortion of tube amplifiers is often as high as 10%. Solid-state amps will have less audio distortion. On the other hand, distortion will depend on the particular audio amplifier technology. In the past, typically "Class-A" and "Class-AB" amplifiers were obtainable which are also referred to as "analog amplifiers". This technology offers fairly low audio distortion. However, the power efficiency is only 10 to 30%. This means that the majority of the electrical power provided to the amp is wasted as heat whereas a tiny fraction is utilized to amplify the audio signal. Another technology is called "Class-D". This technology offers far higher power efficiency than analog amplifiers, usually around 80 to 90%. "Class-D" amplifiers are also referred to as "digital amplifiers". The disadvantage is that digital amps frequently have higher audio distortion than analog amplifiers. This is mostly a result of the switching distortion of the output power stage. Most recent digital audio amplifiers, on the other hand, employ a feedback mechanism and can minimize the audio distortion to below 0.05%. Your amplifier should deliver enough power to drive your speakers. The amount of power will depend on the power handling rating of your loudspeakers. An additional factor is the size of your room. There are two values for speaker power handling: peak and average power handling. The peak value indicates how much power the speaker can handle for small periods of time. The average value on the other hand denotes how much power the loudspeaker can handle constantly without damage. If your listening area is relatively small then you may not need to drive your speaker to its rated power handling value. You would most likely be ok getting an amp that can provide 20 to 50 Watts even though your loudspeakers might be capable to handle 100 Watts of power. Low-impedance speakers usually offer high sensitivity and are easier to drive to high volume than high-impedance speakers. Be certain that your amp can drive your speaker impedance. You can without difficulty find the rated speaker impedance range in your amplifier’s user manual. Two other important parameters to look at when selecting an amplifier are signal-to-noise ratio and frequency response. Signal-to-noise ratio denotes how much noise the amplifier will introduce and should be at least 100 dB for a high-quality amp. The frequency response indicates which audio frequency range the amplifier covers and should be at least 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
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You can get further details regarding audio amplifier technologies and mini amplifier products at Amphony's website.
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