Amplifiers

1. Phono Pre-amp: Amplifies the tiny signal coming out of a record player cartridge to line level (usually 2v)
2. Pre-amp: Switches between line level sources and attenuates the signal using a volume knob to then feed the signal to a power amplifier, sometimes you have tone controls
3. Integrated amplifier: contains a pre-amplifier, power-amplifier and sometimes DAC and phono pre-amp in one device. This is what most people want.
4. Stereo receiver: Integrated amplifier with a tuner.
5. AVR or AV-Receiver: Stereo receiver with multichannel codecs (Dolby Digital, Atmos) and additional power amplifiers for center and back channels. Inputs are usually HDMI.
6. Power amplifier: takes an attenuated signal from a pre-amp to amplify to speaker level

Electronic topologies

1. Volve/Tube amps
2. Class A
3. Class A/B
4. Class D
   1. Manufacturers:
      1. Hypex
      2. Texas Instruments
      3. Icepower
      4. Infinion
      5. Purify
5. Class G

Allows you to boost or cut Bass and Treble frequencies using hardware filters to taste.

Tone defeat, direct or pure bypasses the tone controls to give you an unchanged pure signal.

Adjusts the sound output balance of the left and right speakers to compensate for sound imbalances caused by speaker locations or listening room conditions. This can act as a band aid solution to hearing loss, mismatched transducers and bad speaker arrangement. Ultimately, you want sound to reach both ears equally loud and at the same time.

This control helps to retain a full tonal range at any volume level to compensate for the human ears' loss of sensitivity to high and low-frequency ranges at a low volume level. Meaning you won't perceive weak bass and loss of clarity if you are listening at low volume. It's a tone control that works by implementing the Fletcher-Munson curve by attenuating highs and bass slower than mid frequencies.

To use it the right way, you set the volume to your regular day time volume and set up everything to taste with regular listening volume (and loudness off). At night, when you have to turn it down, so you don't disturb anyone, you use the loudness to attenuate the volume.

Q: My Yamaha has a switch at the back to set the speaker impedance. What is the best setting with 6 ohm speakers?

A: Regardless of the actual speaker load, you want this set to "high".

Explanation:
The Yamahas power supply has two voltage rails, one is low voltage, one is high voltage.
Using the low voltage rail reduces the amps peak power, thus reduces it's heat output. The higher voltage rail means more output power, thus more heat output. A low impedance speaker will demand more current than a high impedance speaker. To save cost, the size of the internal heat sink is as small as possible. However, with low impedance/high current speakers on the high voltage rail, there may be a situation where the cooling is not enough and the heat protection would trigger. The music would stop and you would have to restart the amplifier.
Yamaha has protected itself from customers with that problem by allowing to select the low voltage rail.
Leave it on high, only if you have ultra-low impedance speakers (below 2 ohms) and the heat protection gets triggered, switch to low. I don't think anything below the A-S700 or R-S700 can possibly exhaust it's heat budget, but you never know.

• Setting the A/V Receiver Impedance Selector Switch
• Calculate how many watts you need to reach 96dB Remember to add +3dB as the calculator only calculates 1 speaker