Saturday, 15 March 2014

A Few Unknown Facts About Today's Stereo Amplifiers

By Marta McBrian


When purchasing a new amp, you most likely will take a glimpse at the technical specs. One often found specification is the frequency response. This parameter although significant doesn't tell the full story regarding how good the amp is going to sound. You will possibly not fully grasp just how the frequency response is measured. I am going to describe what exactly this specific term means. I hope you will be able to make a more educated buying decision. An amplifier is meant to amplify a sound signal enough in order to drive a couple of audio speakers to moderate or higher sound level. Producers typically publish the frequency range over which the amplifier functions. This range is specified by listing two frequencies: a lower and upper frequency. To give an example, the lower frequency could be 20 Hz and the upper frequency 20 kHz. From this specification it appears the amp can function as a HIFI amp. You could possibly be lured to pick an amp which provides the greatest frequency response. Yet, there is certainly far more to understanding an amplifier's overall performance than merely understanding this simple range.

It seems there are lots of ways which producers use when specifying the frequency response. The standard convention is to show the frequency range inside of which the gain is going to decrease at most 3 dB from the nominal gain.

However, numerous companies ignore this convention. They push the lower frequency and upper frequency to where the amplifier rarely offers any kind of gain. Furthermore, these numbers tell absolutely nothing about precisely how linear the amp is working within this range. Ideally you should really attempt to obtain a frequency response diagram from the producer. In this diagram, you'll discover how the amp behaves inside the frequency response range. It's also possible to spot any kind of peaks or valleys the amplifier could have. Peaks along with valleys could potentially cause colorization of the music. Preferably the amplifier needs to have a constant gain within the entire frequency response with the exception of the drop off at the lower and upper limit. Apart from the frequency response, a phase response chart will also tell a good deal regarding the functionality as well as sound quality of the amplifier. You furthermore need to look at the conditions under which the frequency response was calculated. You generally will not find any kind of details about the measurement conditions, however, in the maker's data sheet. The fact is that a lot of amps will behave differently with different loudspeaker loads. This is because that various speaker loads can cause changes to the behavior of the output power stage of the amp.

The conditions under which the frequency response was measured may also be important to understand. In fact amplifiers could have different frequency responses depending on the loudspeaker which is connected.

Generally modern digital or "Class-D" amplifiers can have changes in the frequency response with various loads. The reason is the fact that Class-D amps make use of switching FETs as the power phase which create a substantial amount of switching components. These components are eliminated with a filter which is part of the amplifier. However, the frequency response of the amp now depends on the speaker load because the behavior of this lowpass filter is affected by the load impedance. Normally the lower the speaker load impedance the lower the upper cut-off frequency of the amp A number of amps incorporate feedback as a way to compensate for changes in gain as a result of different attached loads. One more method makes use of audio transformers between the power stage of the amp and various outputs. Each output is designed to connect a different loudspeaker load. This method makes certain that the amplifier will be loaded equally and also increases amplifier power efficiency.




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