Thursday, March 20, 2014

Discovering The Truth About Recent Music Amplifiers

By Marta McBrian


The frequency response is probably the most commonly found parameter in order to characterize stereo amps. Even so, it can regularly be deceptive and might not necessarily offer a good sign of the sound quality. I will shed light on the meaning of this expression and even offer some recommendations on how to interpret it when searching for an amplifier. An amplifier is built to magnify a sound signal enough in order to drive a set of speakers to moderate or higher sound level. Suppliers typically present the frequency range over which the amp functions. This range is specified by showing two frequencies: a lower and also upper frequency. For example, the lower frequency may be 20 Hz and the higher frequency 20 kHz. From this specification it appears the amplifier would be able to operate as a HIFI amplifier. You may be thinking the larger the frequency response the higher quality the amp. That, however, may not always be. You ought to glance at the specifications a lot more carefully to adequately understand them all.

An amplifier is going to enlarge a sound signal that is within the frequency response range. If the frequency range is 20 Hz to 20 kHz for instance, the amp could amplify all signals with a frequency higher than 20 Hz and less than 20 kHz. Yet, there is a lot more to comprehending the amplifier's performance than simply considering these figures. A large frequency response does not always mean the amplifier provides great audio quality. For example an amp with a frequency response between 30 Hz and 15 kHz may sound better than a different amplifier with a response between 10 Hz and 30 kHz. In addition, each producer, it appears, implements a different method of specifying the minimum and highest frequency of their amps. Usually, the frequency response displays the normal working range of the amplifier. Within this range, the amp gain is largely constant. At the upper and lower cutoff frequencies the gain is going to decrease by no more than 3 decibels.

Then again, the frequency response quite often is used to misinform buyers by way of extending the frequency range a good deal beyond the range in which the amplifier still operates correctly and also hides the reality that the amp might not be linear. Therefore it is best to have a complete frequency response chart. This sort of graph will show if there are any sort of considerable peaks and valleys inside the working frequency range. Peaks and valleys could potentially cause colorization of the music. Preferably the amp ought to have a constant gain within the whole frequency response aside from the drop off at the upper and lower limit. Aside from the frequency response, a phase response diagram may also say a whole lot about the overall performance as well as sound quality of the amplifier.

This change is most detectable with a lot of digital amplifiers, otherwise known as Class-D amplifiers. Class-D amps have a lowpass filter in their output in order to reduce the switching components that are produced by the internal power FETs. However, the frequency response of the amp now depends upon the speaker load because the behavior of this lowpass filter is influenced by the load impedance. Normally the lower the speaker load impedance the lower the upper cut-off frequency of the amp

Mainly current digital or "Class-D" amps will show changes in the frequency response with various loads. The reason is the fact that Class-D amplifiers utilize switching FETs as the power stage which produce a great deal of switching components. These components are removed with a filter that is part of the amplifier. However, the frequency response of the amplifier now is dependent upon the loudspeaker load considering that the behavior of this lowpass filter is influenced by the load impedance. Normally the lower the speaker load impedance the lower the upper cut-off frequency of the amp Several of the most recent digital amps feed back the music signal following the lowpass filter to compensate for this drawback and also to make the frequency response of the amp independent of the connected load. On the other hand, if the amplifier is not constructed well, this sort of feedback can cause instability and cause loud noise being produced by the amplifier if specific loudspeakers are connected. Other amps use transformers and provide outputs for various loudspeaker loads. Aside from enhancing the frequency response of the amp, this approach generally additionally enhances the amplifier efficiency.




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