If you have spent a good deal of money on a pair of good-quality speakers, you wish to be confident that you get an audio amplifier that will offer outstanding sound quality while meeting your budget. I will give a number of tips about audio amp technologies to help you make the right buying decision.
There is a variety of different audio amps available that all differ in their specifications, shape and size. By following some plain guidelines, you will be able to pick the model that best meets your application and resources.
The most apparent criterion is the size of the amp. There are models that are as big as half your living room whilst several of the newest mini amplifier types are as tiny as a bar of soap. A big number of amplifiers are the size of a standard rack. This allows your amp to be stacked on top of your other audio equipment.
There are some core amplifier technologies available. One technology is named “solid-state”. Solid-state amps now account for the greater part of audio amplifiers. In the past, tube amps have been popular. Even today tube amplifiers are still available. Tube amplifiers, though, have a rather high amount of harmonic distortion. Harmonic distortion refers to how much the audio signal is degraded whilst being amplified. This term is frequently used while comparing the audio quality of amps.
Tube amplifiers will have audio distortion of up to 10%. Solid state amps will have lower audio distortion depending on the amplifier technology that is utilized. In the past, for the most part “Class-A” and “Class-AB” amps were obtainable which are also known as “analog amplifiers”. Audio amps which are based on these technologies typically have low harmonic distortion. In addition, this technology is fairly inexpensive. Though, the disadvantage is that the power efficiency is merely in the order of 20% to 30%. This means that most of the electrical power provided to the amp is wasted as heat whereas a small fraction is utilized to amplify the audio signal.
Another technology is referred to as “Class-D”. This technology offers much greater power efficiency than analog amplifiers, generally around 80 to 90%. “Class-D” amplifiers are also referred to as “digital amplifiers”. The tradeoff is that digital amplifiers often have higher audio distortion than analog amps. This is for the most part a result of the switching distortion of the output power stage. Newest digital audio amplifiers, on the other hand, make use of a feedback mechanism and can reduce the audio distortion to below 0.05%.
Your amp should deliver adequate power to drive your loudspeakers. The amount of power will depend on the power handling rating of your speakers. One more factor is the size of your space. 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 short periods of time. The average value on the other hand denotes how much power the speaker can handle constantly without harm.
If you have a fairly small listening area then 20 to 50 Watts of power should be plenty while your loudspeaker may be rated for 100 Watts or higher. Speakers though differ in their impedance and sensitivity. As a rule of thumb speakers with low impedance offer higher sensitivity. High-sensitivity speakers are less difficult to drive to high volume than low-sensitivity speakers. Be certain that your amp can drive your loudspeaker impedance. You can without difficulty find the rated speaker impedance range in your amplifier’s user manual.
Other important 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 amplifiers.