DJ Equipment - Audio Power Amplifiers

Power amplifiers are the muscle of the DJ sound system. If there isn’t enough “muscle” for the speakers, they can’t performer to their utmost capability, without distortion and possibly damage. Generally, power amplifiers should be matched to the RMS power rating of the speakers they will be driving. Under powering a speaker can cause the amplifier to go into “clipping”, which is a square way instead of a sine wave, and can blow the speaker from the distortion. Over powering a speaker will make the speaker move too far out of its excursion limit and rip the cone apart, or burn the voice coil. All professional power amps will have indicators for power and clipping, and some have input signal indicators. If you see the clip light flashing consistently, turn the volume down or blow your speakers.

Power amps use XLR, ¼” phone, and even RCA input connections for versatility, and there are banana, ¼” phone, and Speakon connectors for the speaker outputs. Be sure to match the connector types of the amp and speakers with the right cable for problem free operation.

Some amps can be run in Bridge mode and usually have a switch to select it. Bridge Mode makes a stereo amp into a mono amp using all of the power available at the positive speaker terminals. Be sure to connect the speaker cable properly to run in bridge mode, because you will be using the positive speaker terminals only.

A power amps’ output power is rated at specific impedances usually 4 and 8 Ohms. The majority of DJ speakers are going to be 8 Ohms with larger speakers being 4 Ohms. The amp will have more power at 4 Ohms than at 8 because of less resistance. Some amps are rated for 2 Ohm operation, but some professionals don’t recommend it because the impedance is so low. A speaker’s impedance is frequency dependant so it will vary with the program material fed into it; the variance swings at 2 Ohms could go to 0 Ohms possibly damaging the speaker.

Contact greatDJgear.com with any questions or concerns you may have about purchasing the right amplifier for you.