Audio amplifier is just simply amplify sound simple process. For example, our common televisions, tape recorders, etc. itself can playback device, which has a special deal with the sound board, which is an audio amplifier. The audio power amplifier is to amplify the power of the audio itself, achieve amplification purposes, such amplifiers are mainly Class A and Class D circuit applications circuits are more in outdoor broadcast. Mainly because the speaker cables longer than that.

Recently launched audio power amplifiers and Professional Line Array created a boom in the audio industry world. Product sizes are shrinking at a rapid scale turning everything into miniature. In the previous days tube amps would provide a commonplace and occupied a larger part of the living room.

These tube amps have been substituted by solid-state amps for the most part. An amplifier or an amp is a device that can transform and increase amplitude of an input signal. This signal could be either a voltage or current. The power amplifier signifies amount of power which is to be delivered to the load. The points that one needs to be taken care of while choosing amplifiers are obviously the power needed and the acceptable frequency range.

Most of the people have this question about what amount of power needs to be considered for successfully playing the power amplifier. For the medium range bands power needed is between 3 to 4 watts per audience member. For large bands it is 5 to 6 watts per audience member.

These modern solid-state amplifiers do combine traditional pre amplifiers and power amplifiers into single package which is not bigger than DVD players. The recent advancements in audio technology gave rise to generation of super-miniature audio amplifiers.

These "Class-A" and "Class-AB" were two primary amplifier architectures of audio amplifiers used in the past. These have low power efficiency. Do you know that small portion of power only 40% - is converted into audio by analog amplifier which is later radiated as heat? These amplifiers rated output power determines the amount of power required.

The digital Class-D amplifiers have higher power efficiency than many other analog amplifiers. Off late new amplifier technologies have emerged with "Class-T" and "Class-D" architectures. These new architectures have feedback mechanism. The signal is fed back to the amplifier input without any problem. Such miniature power audio amplifiers are used wherever the earlier amplifiers fail to work.

 

Audio power amplifiers basically convert low power frequency signals to higher frequency signals. Their categorization is also being done according to the amount of power they deliver to the load.

There are different power amplifiers types available in the market -

1. Vacuum Tube Amplifiers- They have dominated audio industry till the 1960s, and are very much in use till date as well.
2. Solid State Transistor Amplifier- They have been used in transistors and are supposed to control the bass frequencies in a better way than tube amplifiers.

3. Its Circuit and Design Types - They have been divided into Class A, Class B, Class AB, and Class D.

 

Related reading: Professional Power Amplifier Active Line Array Systems