Amping It Up

With the ever-growing demand for more products to be designed with the environment in mind, it has spawned some ingenius products which are simple and do not have any negative effects on the environment. In the Hi-Fi and home entertainment industry there have not been many radical environmentally driven products.

But now a completely new fresh, simplistic approach has been taken with the Eco-amp which costs less than $8 and consists of  paper design that is folded and slots on the bottom of an iPhone. It is certainly the most rudimentary product I’ve ever seen, but nonetheless it is the only amplification product that has been designed purely with the environment in mind – perfect for amping it up, guilt free. Whether or not it will appeal to the general market is a completely different story. Of course if you are simply looking for a more energy efficient amplifier, you can pick from a variety of modern designs.

Strongest Amplifier Ever?

Linn produce some phenomenal power amplifiers, like the Linn Majik 6100, but nothing can compare to the latest invention by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology. More sensitive than the most carefully designed pre-amp, this is a parametric amplifier. Incorporating superconductors like titanium nitride (TiN) and niobium titanium nitride (NbTiN), the device is designed for astronomy and amplifying signals from distant galaxies, black holes and other cosmic phenomena. As well as the myriad possibilities for interplanetary communication, the tech has exciting implications for other industries. While it may be decades before the technology is perfected to be cheap and compact enough for everyday application, imagine a parametric audio amp with the range of a power amp and the fine tuning abilities of the most exquisite of pre-amps… this would revolutionise music and communication on earth.