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Hello, I use a laptop to play music at tailgate parties. I have two dual woofer Cerwin Vega Intense speakers which I am currently powering with a ONKYO home stereo tuner. I would like to purchase a power amp for a cleaner sound with addtional power. I have been told that I will need some sort of pre-amp because the signal coming out of the laptop will not be strong enough. I would appriciate any information on this.
Thanks in advance.:rockon2:
Laptops don't normally have a line output, only a headphone output, which I would have thought would beat a high enough level to drive a power amp.
You could look at some of the external professional USB/firewire soundcards from the likes of M-Audio, EMU etc. as some of these will act as preamps with a volume control and will generally have better DACs than most onboard cards.
M-audio would be good Headroom Total Bithead is also very good and very portable.
The thing to bear in mind about matching amps is the impedance (usually more important than the power) a good rule of thumb is that there should not be more than a factor of x10 between two devices.
as Headphone outputs are often around 30ohm this can cause a poor quality signal and is why a line out will often sound better.