The Steel Guitar Forum

Peavey describes the Nashville 1000 as a "digital amplifier". So, what is a digital amplifier? In what respect is it different from any other solid state amplifier? Where does the "digital" part come in? Is the signal from the instrument sampled at some point (converted to a digital signal) and then reconverted at the amplifier? Or is this just the marketing department misusing a popular term.

Any help would be appreciated.

Typically it is that the power supply is a switching supply design vs a linear design as used in most 'older' designs.

A switching supply turns on and off at a high frequency to regulate the output voltage hense the term digital is often used. Digital ie two states, on or off where linear is always on.

One advantage to switching supplies is that the weight can be greatly reduced for a given output rating. One disadvantage is unless properly designed switching supplies can generate large amounts of noise.

Hope this helps.

Moved to 'Electronics' section of the Forum.