Picking The Perfect Audio Amplifier For Your Home Theater Looking at recent audio amplifier products, one

cannot help but be daunted by the number of technologies and models. I will explain some crucial amplifier expressions and help you choose the perfect model regardless what your particular use might be. An audio amplifier will connect your audio source with your speakers by converting the rather weak source signal into a strong sufficient signal to drive your loudspeakers. Some audio sources such as surround-sound receivers already come with a built-in audio amplifier. Using a separate amplifier, however, offers some advantages. One benefit is possessing more flexibility and being able to select an amplifier that is best appropriate to drive a certain speaker. Some of today's miniature amplifier types can be concealed almost everywhere due to their small size. Output wattage is one of the factors that many people will consider first when choosing an amplifier since driving lowsensitivity speakers or driving speakers in large rooms or outdoors calls for fairly high wattage. Still, be cautious not to overdrive your speakers. This can harm your speakers beyond repair. However dont be overly worried about wattage. An amp providing 20 to 50 Watts will give you more than plenty of power to adequately drive a speaker in any but the largest room. There are two conventions for specifying amplifier wattage. The first one specifies how much power the amplifier is capable to supply continuously. That figure is frequently called rms or continuous power. The second number is referred to as peak or maximum power and tells how much the amp can deliver for small bursts. Usually you ought to pick an amplifier based on rms power. On the other hand, make sure that the amplifier has adequate headroom or peak power to avoid clipping of music signals. However, audio quality is just as significant as having enough audio power. Therefore be certain to also look at factors related to the quality of the amplifier. One of these parameters is referred to as total harmonic distortion or THD. Every amplifier will introduce some imperfections into the audio signal which is referred to as distortion and expressed in percent or dB. The amount of distortion varies between amplifier types. A smaller distortion means higher audio quality. Audiophilegrade amps will have distortion figures of at most 0.05% while consumer-grade amps have distortion of up to 10%. Another figure related to audio quality is known as signal-to-noise ratio and describes the amount of unwanted noise the amplifier will add to the signal. Consumer-grade amps will have a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of at least 80 dB. Higher-end amps will have an SNR of 100 dB or more. Audiophile amps will have an SNR of close to 120 dB. There are several amplifier technologies available. Modern amplifiers are mostly Class-D amplifiers. Class-D amplifiers have a high power efficiency and waste little energy as heat. High power efficiency has led to the development of extremely small amplifiers. Some of these recent mini amplifiers are no larger than a deck of cards. Lots of Class-D amplifiers, on the other hand, have higher distortion and a lower signal-to-noise ratio than Class-A or Class-AB amplifiers. Be sure to look closely at these numbers when picking a Class-D type amplifier.