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Picking a superior audio amplifier for your loudspeakers is not a trivial chore. You wish to ensure that your amplifier matches your loudspeakers. I will describe some essential amplifier language and give some tips to help you select the perfect amplifier.

There is a flood of different audio amps available that all differ in their specifications, shape and size. By following some easy 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 whereas a number of of the newest mini amplifier models are as tiny as a deck of cards. A large number of amplifiers are the size of a typical rack. This allows your amp to be stacked on top of your other audio devices.

The huge majority of today’s audio amps are solid state amplifiers as opposed to more traditional tube amplifiers. Tube amps have been dominant a decade or so ago. Then again, tube amps have fairly high audio distortion. Audio distortion refers to how much the audio signal is being degraded while passing through the amp and is specified in percent. This value is frequently used when comparing the audio quality of amplifiers.

An audio distortion of up to 10% is characteristic for tube amps while solid-state amps have lower audio distortion depending on the specific technology. The most conventional amplifiers employ a “Class-A” and “Class-AB” technology. These amps are also labeled “analog amplifiers”. While amplifiers utilizing these technologies normally have low audio distortion, 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 small fraction is used to amplify the audio signal.

Another technology is named “Class-D”. This technology provides far higher power efficiency than analog amplifiers, usually around 80 to 90%. “Class-D” amps are also named “digital amplifiers”. Because of the switching output stage, digital amplifiers normally have higher harmonic distortion than analog amplifiers. However, a few of the newest models are capable to reduce distortion to 0.05% and lower by employing a feedback mechanism.

The amplifier should be capable to offer adequate output power to sufficiently drive your loudspeakers which will depend not only on how much power your loudspeakers can handle but also on the size of your listening environment. Speaker 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 may not need to drive your speakers to their rated value. 20 to 40 Watts of power would probably be sufficient. Low-impedance loudspeakers usually offer high sensitivity and are simpler to drive to high volume than high-impedance loudspeakers. Check your amplifier manual to make certain that your amp can drive your loudspeaker impedance.

Additional vital parameters are the signal-to-noise ratio and frequency response which should be in the order of no less than 100 dB signal-to-noise ratio and 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency response for high-quality amps.

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