Tall challenges

The Greeks prefer their yogurt with less water and so we name it after them. Loudspeakers need large signals to drive them but sources of music produce only tiny ones, and so we name the interface between the two by its task; amplifier. Amplifiers have a nearly impossible task: taking in the tiny, delicate music signals from our source and connecting them to a massive power supply controlling the movement of our speakers with brute force, hoping never to overwhelm or lose anything in the process. Nothing else in the chain of music-making equipment has such a difficult task except the loudspeaker itself. And power amplifiers haven't the necessary tools to complete their tasks perfectly. They are like an artist trying to create the Mona Lisa with a paintbrush the size of a novel. None are perfect, all are noticeably flawed. Which means, of course, what you have in your home is robbing you of the potential buried in your music. It is instructive to breakdown the tasks of an amplifier into three main categories of work:

• Acting as the interface between the tiny signals fed to it
• Using those delicate signals to control a huge knuckle-dragging power supply
• Sending the output of the power supply to the speaker and making sure it does what it's told

Tall challenges and we'll look at each one starting tomorrow.