Hi all,

I know this is a very stupid question, but how exactly does an amp work? I've been searching and figured there's 2ways, 4 ways...etc. Which one is better? And also does a good/bad amp affect/effect the quality of sound? How about the wirings of speakers and woofers to the amp goes?? Is more watts always better?? Anybody please give me a intro on how an amp works. Thanks for helping a noob here.

Gary

 

An amp takes an electrical signal and amplifies it

The input signal can be either line-level (low power) or speaker-level (high power), and the output is an amplified speaker level. The number of "ways" is simply the number of channels, and in general, one speaker connects to each channel (more than one speaker can be connected to a channel, but research parallel/series wiring before you go and blow out your amp with a 1ohm load).

Quality of the amp DEFINITELY affects quality of sound. More watts generally = higher SPL (loudness), although lower quality amps will tend to overshoot their max wattage by a fair margain.

I'm sure www.crutchfield.com has more info in their information section, they're a pretty good resource for beginner info.

Hope that helps a bit.