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Sunday 21 October 2012

An Analysis Of Today's Small Amplifiers

By Michael Jacobs


Most current amps may deliver pretty large wattage to a loudspeaker regardless of appearing exceptionally small. Let me look behind the scenes of new sound amps and also reveal the key of precisely how they are becoming so compact. I'm also going to clarify several key parameters for the purpose of calculating the wattage that these types of power amps can deliver to a speaker.

Historically, power amps which produce average to higher wattage were usually rather large and heavy. Amplifiers which are employing linear power supplies are fairly heavy because the metal core of the power source transformer is rather large so as to provide sufficient energy. More sophisticated t-class amps are employing switching-mode power supplies which are a great deal smaller sized and also much more lightweight than linear energy supplies. Switching-mode energy supplies offer better efficiency than linear energy sources. Yet, their energy will not be as clean as the power supplied by linear energy sources. Consequently some high-end audio amps even now like to take advantage of linear power sources.

The dimensions of the power source is among the reasons why traditional music amps are pretty large. Furthermore, the low efficiency of old fashioned power amps itself is one more reason for their large size. A high-efficiency amp employs almost all of the energy it consumes to deliver energy to the connected speaker. The smaller the amplifier efficiency the more power is dissipated by the amp in the form of heat. A big level of lost energy necessitates large heat sinks to keep the amplifier from becoming a fire hazard. Those heat sinks make the amplifier pretty large. The majority of newer power amplifiers tend to be switched-mode amps. Class-D amplifiers (known as switching amps) attain very good power efficiency. This is because of how the power transistor stage is switched between the two supply rails. Due to this fact, digital audio amplifiers have a whole lot less issues with heat radiation when compared to Class-A or Class-AB amps. A low-efficiency power amp needs a lot more power to function compared to a high-efficiency sound amp for a given output power level. This large desire for power increases the dimensions of the power source. This leads to the power amp to get even bigger because of the large energy source. Air circulation is far less of a problem for high-efficiency switching-mode power amplifiers. Commonly no air fan is needed anymore. The sound amp housing by itself takes the place of the heat sink in many cases and allows the stereo amp to become rather compact.

Several mini amps get even more compact with an external power source such as a wallwart. Most of today's Class-T amps will need a DC voltage in order to operate. The voltage plus DC current of the external power supply are critical in finding out what amount of wattage the stereo amp can deliver to a loudspeaker. One can find about three important variables involved in figuring out just how much energy the music amp can output. These variables are generally the energy supply DC voltage, the amp output circuit along with the speaker impedance. In addition to those important parameters, there are a few other criteria like maximum energy supply current, the kind of power transistors utilized in the power amplifier plus the sound amp thermal handling ability.

The power supply DC voltage is so important given that the amplifier power stage output swing is limited by the energy source rail. The greater the DC supply voltage, the more the stereo amplifier is able to drive the loudspeakers. Music amplifiers which only drive one of the two loudspeaker terminals, i.e. work in single-bridge mode, can provide just one fourth of the wattage compared to stereo amps which drive both loudspeaker terminals at the identical supply DC voltage. Hence if the power supply DC voltage is rather small, make sure that the amplifier works in full-bridged mode. Lastly, the loudspeaker impedance plays a major role in figuring out the maximum power level. The smaller the impedance, the more energy the amplifier is able to supply to the loudspeaker. Nonetheless, most amps have a minimum loudspeaker impedance that is safe for the amplifier to cope with.




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