Friday, February 7, 2014

How Does Cordless Speaker Energy Efficiency Affect Fidelity?

By Michelle Jaeger


I will take a look at the expression "power efficiency" which lets you know how much cordless speakers squander to guide you choose a pair of wireless loudspeakers.

Various issues are brought on by wireless loudspeakers that have low power efficiency: Low-efficiency cordless speakers are going to squander some power as heat and therefore are more expensive to run when compared with high-efficiency models because of their higher energy usage. To protect the circuit components, low-efficiency wireless loudspeakers must find ways to get rid of the heat which is produced. Commonly more components need to be added in order to radiate adequate energy and maintain the ideal operating temperature. These components are typically heat sinks along with fans. Heat sinks and fans need space and are costly. The cordless speakers therefore is going to become relatively big and expensive. In addition heat fans will create running noise. Wireless speakers that have low efficiency can't be placed in tight spaces or inside sealed enclosures as they demand a great deal of circulation.

You need to search for the power efficiency value when searching for a couple of cordless speakers. The best place to look is the wireless speakers data sheet. Power efficiency is usually shown in percent. Analog Class-D amplifiers offer a power efficiency of around 25% whilst switching-mode amps provide close to 98%. Getting an amplifier having an efficiency of 90% for example will mean that 10% of the energy that is used is wasted when 90% will be audio power.

Please be aware, though, that efficiency will depend on how much energy the amp delivers at a given moment. Because every amplifier will need a specific amount of power, irrespective of the level of power the amplifier provides to the loudspeakers, the amplifier power efficiency is higher the more energy the amplifier provides and is usually given for the highest power the amplifier can handle.

To measure the power efficiency, usually a test signal of 1 kHz is fed into the amp and a power resistor attached to the amp output to imitate the loudspeaker load. Next the amplifier output signal is measured and the wattage calculated that the amplifier delivers to the load which is then divided by the overall energy the amplifier consumes. Since the efficiency will depend on the audio power, usually the output power is varied and an efficiency graph made which will show the amp efficiency for each level of output power.

When selecting a couple of wireless loudspeakers you will need to weigh efficiency versus fidelity since cordless loudspeakers which use low-efficiency analog amps often provide the maximum audio fidelity whilst digital products will have greater distortion. Some more recent wireless loudspeakers, like types which include Class-T amps, can reduce music distortion to amounts close to those of types using analog music amps and also can achieve great signal-to-noise ratio. Deciding on one of these kinds of wireless speakers will deliver great efficiency and at the same time large audio fidelity.




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