Are you looking to get a new amp for your home speakers? You may be dazzled by the amount of choices you have. In order to make an informed choice, it is best to familiarize yourself with popular terms. One of these specifications is known as "signal-to-noise ratio" and is not often understood. I will help clarify the meaning of this term.
When looking for an amplifier, you firstly are going to check the cost, wattage amid additional fundamental criteria. However, after this initial selection, you are going to still have several types to choose from. Now you are going to concentrate more on a few of the technical specs, such as signal-to-noise ratio as well as harmonic distortion. An important parameter of power amps is the signal-to-noise ratio. To put it simply, the signal-to-noise ratio shows how much hum or hiss the amp is going to add to the music signal. This ratio is typically described in decibel or "db" for short.
You can perform a simple assessment of the amp hiss by short circuiting the amplifier input, setting the volume to maximum and listening to a loudspeaker attached to the amplifier. You will hear some amount of hissing and/or hum coming from the loudspeaker. This hiss is generated by the amp itself. Make certain that the gain of the amps is set to the same level. Otherwise you will not be able to objectively evaluate the amount of hiss between several amps. The general rule is: the lower the level of static that you hear the higher the noise performance. While looking at the amplifier specification sheet, you want to look for an amplifier with a large signal-to-noise ratio number which indicates that the amp outputs a small level of static. There are several reasons why power amplifiers will add some form of noise or other unwanted signal. Transistors and resistors that are part of every modern amp by nature make noise. The overall noise is dependent on how much noise every element produces. Yet, the location of these elements is also vital. Components which are part of the amplifier input stage are going to generally contribute most of the noise.
If you favor an amp with a small amount of hissing, you may look at the signal-to-noise ratio number of the spec sheet. Most manufacturers will publish this number. Amps with a large signal-to-noise ratio will output a small level of static. Noise is produced due to a number of reasons. One factor is that today's amplifiers all employ elements including transistors and resistors. These components will generate some amount of hiss. Generally the elements which are situated at the input stage of an amp will contribute most to the overall noise. Consequently suppliers usually are going to select low-noise elements whilst designing the amp input stage.
The most popular technique for measuring the signal-to-noise ratio is to set the amp to a gain that permits the maximum output swing. Subsequently a test signal is input to the amp. The frequency of this signal is usually 1 kHz. The amplitude of this tone is 60 dB underneath the full scale signal. Next the noise-floor energy is calculated in the frequency range between 20 Hz and 20 kHz and compared with the full scale signal energy.
A different convention in order to state the signal-to-noise ratio employs more subjective terms. These terms are "dBA" or "A weighted". You are going to discover these terms in a lot of amp specification sheets. This method tries to examine in how far the amp noise is perceived by human hearing which is most perceptive to signals at frequencies at 1 kHz. An A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio weighs the noise floor according to the human hearing and is normally higher than the unweighted signal-to-noise ratio.
When looking for an amplifier, you firstly are going to check the cost, wattage amid additional fundamental criteria. However, after this initial selection, you are going to still have several types to choose from. Now you are going to concentrate more on a few of the technical specs, such as signal-to-noise ratio as well as harmonic distortion. An important parameter of power amps is the signal-to-noise ratio. To put it simply, the signal-to-noise ratio shows how much hum or hiss the amp is going to add to the music signal. This ratio is typically described in decibel or "db" for short.
You can perform a simple assessment of the amp hiss by short circuiting the amplifier input, setting the volume to maximum and listening to a loudspeaker attached to the amplifier. You will hear some amount of hissing and/or hum coming from the loudspeaker. This hiss is generated by the amp itself. Make certain that the gain of the amps is set to the same level. Otherwise you will not be able to objectively evaluate the amount of hiss between several amps. The general rule is: the lower the level of static that you hear the higher the noise performance. While looking at the amplifier specification sheet, you want to look for an amplifier with a large signal-to-noise ratio number which indicates that the amp outputs a small level of static. There are several reasons why power amplifiers will add some form of noise or other unwanted signal. Transistors and resistors that are part of every modern amp by nature make noise. The overall noise is dependent on how much noise every element produces. Yet, the location of these elements is also vital. Components which are part of the amplifier input stage are going to generally contribute most of the noise.
If you favor an amp with a small amount of hissing, you may look at the signal-to-noise ratio number of the spec sheet. Most manufacturers will publish this number. Amps with a large signal-to-noise ratio will output a small level of static. Noise is produced due to a number of reasons. One factor is that today's amplifiers all employ elements including transistors and resistors. These components will generate some amount of hiss. Generally the elements which are situated at the input stage of an amp will contribute most to the overall noise. Consequently suppliers usually are going to select low-noise elements whilst designing the amp input stage.
The most popular technique for measuring the signal-to-noise ratio is to set the amp to a gain that permits the maximum output swing. Subsequently a test signal is input to the amp. The frequency of this signal is usually 1 kHz. The amplitude of this tone is 60 dB underneath the full scale signal. Next the noise-floor energy is calculated in the frequency range between 20 Hz and 20 kHz and compared with the full scale signal energy.
A different convention in order to state the signal-to-noise ratio employs more subjective terms. These terms are "dBA" or "A weighted". You are going to discover these terms in a lot of amp specification sheets. This method tries to examine in how far the amp noise is perceived by human hearing which is most perceptive to signals at frequencies at 1 kHz. An A-weighted signal-to-noise ratio weighs the noise floor according to the human hearing and is normally higher than the unweighted signal-to-noise ratio.
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