Amplification

There is a lot of confusion is around with power, current, ohmage, etc..

As long as you get a high-current amplifier with at least 50W output into 8ohm, you'll be fine at quite reasonable levels with floorstanders (as long as they're not 4 Ohm, if so a 100W amp will be recommended)

• 16 Ohm- very easy to drive, usually bundled speakers from TV Pro-Logic sets
• 8 Ohm-easy to drive
• 6 Ohm- slightly harder to drive. A 100W speaker pair will be fine with a 50W stereo power-amp.
• 4 Ohm- Quite difficult to drive, make sure your amp can handle it. <4 Ohm- Be prepared to buy a Krell amp!

Avoid the cheap 'n' nasty amps which sound too good to be true, i.e. a 100W power amp for £100, with gadgets & gizmos.

Naim amps, even though they're only 30W, can still drive massive speakers- this is due to Naims high current (ie, 30- 40 amperes current compared to a cheap 10 amperes Sony)

There are usually the following connections on the back of integrated amplifiers...

• Stereo phono. Line-level inputs
• Tape/VCR stereo. Line-level phono loop (in/out)
• Pre-out stereo. Volume-controlled phono outputs
• Poweramp-in stereo phono input, bypasses internal volume control.
• Loudspeaker output
• Earth
• Stereo MM/MC phono input (sometimes included, others upgrade option)

Tube amps are still around, but you have to be careful when matching with speakers, Tube amp here- £2500. Tube amps are renowned as the BEST for audio quality. Unfortunately, too expensive for me!

If anyone has more technical knowledge than me, please email me. Any errors will be corrected.