Technology

Analogue Amplification

This is the most common type of amplifier, which is characterised by being heavy, bulky and producing a lot of heat. There are many different designs (or "classes") which have been introduced to try and improve the inherent inefficiencies, some more successful than others.

Digital Amplification

Digital Amplification is otherwise known as "Class D" amplifiers and are far more complex than an analog amplifier, but despite this complexity a properly designed class-D amplifier offers the following benefits:

1) Reduction in size and weight of the amplifier
2) Reduced power waste as heat dissipation and hence smaller heatsinks
3) Very high power conversion efficiency, usually ? 90%.

The high efficiency of a class-D amplifier stems from the fact that the output devices are either ON or OFF - both states representing minimum power dissipation in the output devices. In practice, there are always losses due to leakage, voltage drop, switching speed of power devices etc. However, these are still small enough to keep efficiency very high. To maintain a high efficiency, the filtering is done with purely inductors and capacitors, which store the excess energy until it is needed instead of converting it into heat.