Tube Amplifier
Guidelines For Finding The Perfect Audio Amplifier
If you have spent a good deal of cash on a pair of good-quality speakers, you want to be certain that you get an audio amplifier that will offer superb audio quality while meeting your budget. I will give various tips about audio amplifier products to aid you make the perfect purchasing decision.
Audio amps appear in all different shapes and sizes. They utilize different technologies and have countless technical specs. By following some easy suggestions, you will be able to pick the type that best fits your application and resources.
The most evident criterion is the size of the amplifier. There are models that are as large as half your living room while several of the newest mini amplifier types are as tiny as a bar of soap. Many amplifiers are rack sized. This permits them to be stacked on top of your other audio equipment.
The vast majority of modern audio amps are solid state amplifiers vs more conventional tube amps. Tube amps have been prevalent a decade or so ago. Unfortunately, tube amplifiers have quite large audio distortion which describes how much the audio signal is degraded by the amp.
Harmonic distortion of tube amps is often as large as 10%. Solid-state amplifiers will have lower audio distortion. On the other hand, distortion will depend on the particular audio amplifier technology. In the past, for the most part “Class-A” and “Class-AB” amplifiers were obtainable which are also referred to as “analog amplifiers”. Audio amps which are based on these technologies normally have low harmonic distortion. In addition, this technology is fairly economical. However, the disadvantage is that the power efficiency is merely in the order of 20% to 30%. Power efficiency describes how much of the electrical power is utilized to amplify the audio as opposed to being wasted as heat. Amplifiers with low power efficiency will require quite large heat sinks since the majority of the power is radiated.
In contrast, “Class-D” amplifiers which are also referred to as “digital amplifiers” offer a power efficiency of normally 80 to 90%. This allows the amplifier and power supply to be made much smaller than analog amplifiers. The disadvantage is that many digital amplifiers have larger audio distortion than analog amplifiers though a number of of the most recent types employ a feedback mechanism to minimize distortion to levels of 0.05% and below.
The amp should be capable to offer enough output power to sufficiently drive your speakers which will depend not only on how much power your speakers can tolerate but also on the size of your listening environment. Loudspeaker power handling ability is given 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 describes how much power you can drive the loudspeaker at continuously without harm.
In a small listening area, you might not need to drive your loudspeakers to their rated value. 20 to 40 Watts of power would probably be plenty. Notice however that loudspeakers differ in their sensitivity. Usually a low-impedance loudspeaker will be simpler to drive to high volume than a high-impedance loudspeaker. Be sure that your amplifier can drive your speaker impedance. You can easily find the rated speaker impedance range in your amplifier’s user manual.
Lastly, make sure that your amp introduces little noise and has a broad enough frequency response. High-quality amps will have a signal-to-noise ratio of at the very least 100 dB and a frequency response of a minimum of 20 Hz to 20 kHz.
About the Author
You can find additional information about audio amplifier technologies and mini amplifier products from Amphony’s website.
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