Friday, January 31, 2014

Does Great Cordless Speaker Energy Efficiency Imply High Cost?

By Michelle Jaeger


I'm going to take a look at the phrase "power efficiency" that informs you of how much wireless loudspeakers waste to guide you choose a set of wireless loudspeakers.

Low-efficiency models need more overall power in order to create the identical level of audio power as high-efficiency products. Thus they require a bigger power supply which makes the cordless loudspeakers costlier to construct. Further more, the thermal stress on the circuit board elements and amplifier materials is much more severe and could reduce the reliability.

The power efficiency is displayed as a percentage in the cordless speakers data sheet. Class-A amplifiers are among the least efficient and offer a efficiency of around 25% only. In contrast, switching amps, also called "Class-D" amplifiers deliver efficiencies of up to 98%. Having an amp which has an efficiency of 90% for example means that 10% of the energy that is utilized is wasted whilst 90% would be audio power.

Yet, there are a few things to notice about power efficiency. First of all, this figure is dependent on the amount of energy that the amp is delivering. Since every amplifier is going to require a certain level of power, irrespective of the amount of energy the amplifier delivers to the speakers, the amp efficiency is larger the more power the amp provides and is normally given for the maximum power the amp can handle.

In order to measure the efficiency, usually a test signal of 1 kHz is fed into the amplifier and a power resistor attached to the amp output to imitate the loudspeaker load. Next the amplifier output signal is tested and the power level determined that the amp provides to the load which is subsequently divided by the total power the amplifier uses. Normally a full power profile is plotted in order to show the dependence of the efficiency on the output power. Due to this the output power is swept through several values. The power efficiency at every value is tested and a efficiency graph generated.

When selecting a set of wireless speakers you need to weigh efficiency versus fidelity considering wireless loudspeakers which utilize low-efficiency analog amplifiers often offer the largest music fidelity while digital products are going to have greater distortion. A number of modern wireless speakers, such as types that have Class-T amps, have the ability to lessen audio distortion to levels close to those of types using analog music amplifiers and in addition are able to accomplish great signal-to-noise ratio. Deciding on one of these kinds of cordless speakers will offer high efficiency and at the same time large audio fidelity.




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