Tuesday 28 January 2014

Picking A Couple Of Efficient Cordless Speakers

By Michelle Jaeger


I am going to take a look at the expression "power efficiency" that shows you exactly how much cordless speakers squander to guide you decide on a pair of cordless loudspeakers.

The less efficient your cordless loudspeakers are, the more power will be wasted which leads to several issues: Wireless loudspeakers with small efficiency are going to waste a great amount of power. It's smart to keep in mind the added energy cost when choosing between a high- and low-efficiency type. The wasted energy is radiated by the wireless speakers as heat. Heat won't dissipate effectively through small surfaces. As a result low-efficiency wireless speakers require to use heat sinks. Heat sinks and fans need room and are expensive. The cordless speakers thus will turn out to be pretty big and expensive. In addition heat fans will generate operating noise. To help radiate heat, low-power-efficiency amplifiers require enough air movement. Therefore they cannot be placed in areas with no circulation. Additionally, they can not be fitted in waterproof enclosures.

Wireless loudspeakers with small efficiency require a larger power source to output the identical level of audio power as high-efficiency products. Further more, the thermal stress on the circuit board elements as well as amp materials is more severe and could decrease the reliability. When looking for a pair of cordless speakers, you'll find the efficiency in the data sheet. This value is usually listed as a percentage. Class-A amps are amongst the least efficient and offer a power efficiency close to 25% only. On the other hand, switching amps, also known as "Class-D" amplifiers deliver efficiencies up to 98%. From the efficiency percentage you'll be able to figure out just how much energy the amplifier will waste. An amplifier which has a 50% power efficiency is going to waste half of the used energy. An amp with 90% efficiency is going to squander 10%.

Yet, there are some things to notice about power efficiency. Firstly, this figure depends on the amount of power that the amp is delivering. Because every amplifier will demand a particular level of energy, regardless of the level of energy the amp delivers to the speakers, the amp efficiency is larger the more energy the amp delivers and is typically specified for the greatest power the amplifier can handle.

Please note, though, that efficiency will depend on just how much power the amplifier delivers at a given moment. Since every amplifier will require a particular amount of energy, irrespective of the level of energy the amplifier delivers to the speakers, the amp efficiency is larger the more power the amplifier provides and is normally given for the greatest power the amplifier can handle. To be able to determine the power efficiency, normally a test tone of 1 kHz is fed into the amp and a power resistor attached to the amplifier output to imitate the speaker load. Next the amplifier output signal is measured and the wattage calculated which the amp delivers to the load which is next divided by the total power the amplifier consumes. Commonly a complete power profile is plotted in order to show the dependence of the efficiency on the output power. For this reason the output power is swept through various values. The efficiency at every value is calculated and a power efficiency plot created.

While switching (Class-D) amplifiers have amongst the highest efficiency, they have a tendency to have larger music distortion than analog audio amps and reduced signal-to-noise ratio. Consequently you are going to have to weigh the size of the cordless speakers against the music fidelity. Then again, digital amps have come a long way and are offering better music fidelity than ever before. Wireless loudspeakers which make use of Class-T amplifiers come close to the audio fidelity of products that have analog amplifiers. Subsequently picking a couple of cordless loudspeakers which utilize switching amplifier with great music fidelity is now feasible.




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