Need crash course on (home?) audio...

[MrHelpful]

I don't know what the heck a receiver is, and I only know a little about what amplifiers are, and if you get into the higher-tech parts of audio, you'll probably find that I've left the building. So educate me! TIA

 

[Viperoni]

pre-amp - takes signals from stuff like tuners, cd players, dvd players, etc. and you tell it which one to pass onto the amplifier.

amplifier - takes the tiny line level signal from pre-amp and makes into a very powerful signal to push speakers

receiver - combines the pre-amp and amp into one unit

line level - low level signals that are transfered from, say, a cd player to the receiver/pre-amp

Inside the speakers themselves:

driver - A unit that produces sound

sub(woofer) - driver that produces house shaking frequencies
woofer - driver that produces lower frequencies (not as low as a sub though)
mid(range) - driver that produces midrange sounds (voices, per se)
tweet(er) - driver that produces high frequency sound (cymbal crash, glass breaking)

crossovers AKA xovers - seperates the different frequencies and sends them to the correct drivers (highs to tweets, bass to woofers/subwoofers, etc etc)

Hope that helps a bit

 

[MrHelpful]

Thanks... I knew the part about drivers and woofers though.