Amplifiers

If you are interested in audio and sound quality, then you surely must have heard about amplifiers already. But what exactly are amplifiers? And what purpose do these amplifiers serve, especially in sound quality? To answer that question, we need to define what an amplifier is first.

An amplifier is typically any piece of electronic equipment that uses whatever little energy is comes in contact with to regulate energy of a bigger scale or amount. Now, there are a lot of kinds of amplifiers out in the market serving the same purpose. Examples of these include guitar amplifiers, car amplifiers, and even the digital amplifier. For whatever purpose they serve, they are still audio amplifiers, and that is the bottom line.

An audio signal that is comprised of frequencies between the ranges of 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz is considered of low power. Audio amplifiers vamp up these low power signals into signals of higher power. With audio amplifiers, the sounds will become perfect for that booming sound your loudspeakers are meant to emit. Most audio amplifiers come with certain tasks or processes to handle. These processes include equalization of audio signals, tone control, pre-amplification of electronic signals, and mixing of analog or digital signals. Audio amplifiers also handle the amplification of sounds from the following sources, such as cassette players, record players, and CD players.

Audio amplifiers typically deal with a number of what are termed key design parameters. These parameters include gain, frequency response, distortion, and noise. Let us tackle each of these key design parameters in more depth. Gain is actually that unit of measurement pertaining to a circuit’s ability to increase the power of electronic signals. This power of electronic signals is also known as amplitude. Gain can be quantified as the ratio of a system’s signal output to its signal input.

Frequency response is another kind of ratio, which is typically the system’s response at the output to a signal of changing frequency but constant amplitude at the system’s input. Electronics makes use of the frequency response curves of a system to determine how accurate amplifiers and speakers are at reproducing audio signals. Distortion, on the other hand, is that alteration of sound waves for which amplifiers are used. Any kind of distortion pertains to the alteration of something from its original shape. This usually connotes an effect that is not desired. But when it comes to audio, distortion is actually an effect that is wanted. Electric guitar distortion, for which an amplifier is needed to come by, is actually created to give off a more aggressive sound from the guitar. Thus, distortion is actually desired, especially when you are using guitar amplifiers.

Noise refers to unwanted sounds from sources outside of the system that have been added to the electronic signals. In contrast to distortion, noise is actually something that is not wanted. Noise is often viewed by disturbances in the system. Ironically, the downside of noise is that there are still noise disturbances in sounds that are so low that not even the human ear can detect them or pick them up. Yes, it is pretty ironic that a sound that you can no longer hear still has noise signals disrupting it.

Any changes imposed on these parameters affect each other, so to speak. For example, if you increase the gain parameter, you will most likely increase noise signals in the system. This is something that is not wanted. But increasing gain can also cause an increase in distortion, which is a desired effect to some extent. And decreasing noise and distortion signals, which can either be good or bad depending on the purpose it serves, decreases gain as well. So, a certain kind of balance has to be achieved in the system. And it is totally up to you how you maximize the use of your amplifier in this endeavor.