CHAPTER 11

Power Amplifiers

CHAPTER CONTENTS

Domestic Power Amplifiers

Professional Amplifier Facilities

Specifications

Sensitivity

Power output

Frequency response

Distortion

Crosstalk

Signal-to-noise ratio

Impedance

Damping factor

Phase response

Coupling

Power amplifiers are uneventful devices. They are usually big and heavy, take up a lot of rack space, and feature very little (or sometimes nothing) beyond input and output sockets. Because one tends to ignore them, it is all the more important that they are chosen and used with due care. Coming in a variety of shapes, sizes and ‘generations’, they are all required to do the ostensibly simple job of providing voltage amplification – converting line levels of up to a volt or so into several tens ...

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