Choosing a Power Amplifier

The power amplifier is often just noticed as the bit that produces the loud sounds. The selection you make when picking out an amplifier could be the difference between a pleased crowd and an empty room.

You will find two main considerations to become made whenever you pick your amplifier. Just how much power you will need and what kind of frequency range could be acceptable.

How much power?

This really is the question many people will start with. When we speak about the amount of energy we want you've to think about the audience you're playing to. As a rule of thumb you can use the following:

Medium bands: 3 to 4 watts per audience member.

Big bands: five to 6 watts per audience member.

These are only simple estimates but they are going to typically suffice for most occasions. Just use your common sense, 200 watts is not going to become enough for 200 people in a football stadium. Here's several examples:

Home stereo: 150w is plenty

Rock or heavy metal music in a stadium: in between 5000w and 25000w

What amplifier?

The range of the amplifier depends on two things. May be the instrument going to become amplified separately from every little thing else, a guitar amp for example, or will be the amplifier to be employed as the end amplification.

A guitar amplifier is particularly for guitars due to the range of frequencies it works best at and also the extremely high gain that's required. An excellent (read expensive) end stage power amplifier ought to give an excellent response right across the desired frequency range.

If the amplifier is only to become utilized on a voice microphone then there is certainly no point paying out on an pricey full range PA amplifier.

Once again, typical sense ought to be utilized here and also the manufacturers/suppliers are usually extremely helpful with regards to technical queries regarding music type and frequency range.

A great point to make that the beginner is usually not aware of, is the fact that you cannot just plug something you like into a energy amplifier. The inputs will usually need some sort of conditioning of the signal. This can often involve either a mixer or a pre-amplifier to obtain the signal up to the desired levels.

This a good reference table to ensure that you'll be able to check the amplifier has the desired range:

Singing voice: 60Hz to 1.2kHz
Wood winds: 30Hz to 3kHz
Drums: 70Hz 300Hz
Guitar: 65Hz to 1kHz

These are only a rough guide. Individual instruments can stray wildly from their typical frequency ranges.

I've given you a really simple guide to amplifier selection and obviously there are much more in depth guides and tutorials but everyone has to start somewhere and armed with this details you need to have the ability to request the desired amp.