Beginner's Guide to Amp Specs?

[AlbinoBlacMan]

Is there a beginners guide to understanding amp specs? Both headphone and stereo speaker amps? Also is there anything similar for headphones and speakers? So many numbers! I don't know what is average/good/bad for anything and I also don't know the pro's/cons of any of these numbers.

 

Everything that google has shown me so far is for Car audio which seems to be slightly different than What I need.

 

[esldude]

 

The three three links do a good job explaining amplifiers at varying levels of depth and complexity.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=understanding+ampflifier+specifications&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

 

http://www.ecoustics.com/tl/10309/

 

http://www.rocketroberts.com/techart/powerart_a.htm

 

 

 

Not as much said about headphone amps, and they are less standardized in some ways as the loads presented by various headphones vary a lot more anyway. These two links below give some explanation that may help.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headphone_amplifier

 

http://www.apexhifi.com/specs.html

 

 

The following two links should help a bit on loudspeakers.

 

http://www.ecoustics.com/electronics/products/articles/131062.html

 

http://www.psbspeakers.com/articles/Guide-to-Speaker-Specifications

 

 

So digest the content of these. You might well have more specific questions once you have. And maybe someone here can be of help at that point.