Audio News

An amplifier is an electronic device which is designed to increase the amplitude or strength of a signal fed into it. The signal is usually voltage or current. We have amplifiers all around us, be it in televisions, such as the Samsung 40A656A, CD players, computers, or any other system that uses a speaker to produce sound.

Sound is an amazing phenomenon. Whenever something moves in the atmosphere, it starts vibrating the particles around it, which in turn vibrate the particles around them; thus carrying the pulse of the vibration through the air. Our ears are able to sense these fluctuations in the air pressure and translate them into some electrical signals to be processed by the brain.

The electronic sound equipment, therefore works on the same basic concept. Here the sound waves are the same as air particles which move the microphone diaphragm to and fro. The microphone then converts these movements into some electrical signals which are further encoded by the recorder. Finally a player would re-interpret this obtained pattern into an electrical signal which moves the speaker cone back and forth, and recreates the air pressure fluctuations originally recorded by the microphone.

The microphone diaphragm should be extremely sensitive to record only the minutest of fluctuations in the sound wave. This means that it moves only a short distance. Therefore small electrical currents are produced. It works well in most of the stages, but the last stage, where the speaker cone has to be pushed back and forth, is the most difficult part. In order to achieve this, the audio signals have to be boosted up so that they can produce large currents. This is where the amplifier’s function comes into play. In conclusion, an amplifier’s basic function is to amplify the sound signals.