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Receiver Componentry

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Receiver Componentry

Receivers, Preamplifiers, and Power Amplifiers.

At the heart of any home entertainment system lies one or two very important components. In the early days of high fidelity, a receiver had a pretty simple job requirement: play a radio station, route other source components-like a record player or portable MP3 player, and amplify the signal to a pair of loudspeakers. (That sounds complicated already, doesn't it?)

In today's demanding home entertainment system, a receiver must do the same prescribed functions as listed above; however, it also has to do a myriad of different functions as well. In an average home theater system, the receiver must have digital input connections in addition to the older analog inputs. It must have a processor that can detect these digital signals, process them completely, route them to the appropriate amplifier channel and then pass them through the gain stage out to one of the appropriate six (or eight) loudspeakers. It must also pass video signals from any of the sources and properly pass them on to the display device. And it must do these all with as little degradation to the signal as possible.

As you can see from the "simple" explanation of receiver technologies, there is obviously going to be a difference in the quality levels of receivers. It is true when we say, "not all receivers are created equal." And not all customers are going to have the same level of discerning qualities either.

That's why The Stereo Shoppe offers a complete assortment of the "next step in technology" by offering a wide variety of preamplifiers and power amplifiers as well. A preamplifier and power amplifier is like taking a receiver and dividing it in two. One chassis is strictly designed to route signals while the other chassis is dedicated to simply amplifying the signal to the loudspeakers. Since each chassis is "function specific," the quality of the sound is much better and is even noticed by casual observers.

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