Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun An electronic circuit or device that detects and strengthens weak signals, as from a radio receiver, for subsequent, more powerful amplification stages.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun a voltage amplifier for amplifying a low-level input signal; its output is the input to a higher-level amplifier

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Very strong FM stations can overload a DTV receiver or antenna preamplifier just like very strong TV stations.

    Personal Tech Live with Rob Pegoraro Rob Pegoraro 2010

  • This flagship of the Fatman range comprises of the Fatman Controlroom preamplifier with three line inputs and one phono input and two Fatman Engineroom Mono Block amplifiers, each delivering 200w of pure tube power.

    From The West - Fareastgizmos.com 2008

  • If you like to solder, you also could use an mp3 recorder with line-in with two mics through a selfbuilt mic preamplifier and tiny condenser mics.

    In search of an MP3 recorder « BuzzMachine 2005

  • Yes Jonatan, “To interface a standard professional microphone with the Macintosh sound input port, a preamplifier must be used to boost the output level of the mic (typically less than 1 millivolt) to the level required by the sound card (about 100 millivolts).”

    Apple question « BuzzMachine 2005

  • There are some new modern ribbon microphone designs which incorporate a preamplifier and therefore do require phantom power, also there are new ribbon materials available that are immune to wind blasts and phantom power.

    Wide Dynamic Range | Surveillance 2007

  • BUT - the *circuitry* for a headphone driver is not the same circuitry as for a preamplifier/ADC - which is what you need in order to record.

    The new iPod does proper stereo recording 2005

  • This little model has a preamplifier, a twenty-three-bit analog-to-digital converter with a one hundred and thirty-eight decibel dynamic range.

    State Of War Clancy, Tom 2003

  • Later Lionel sent me a very valuable present, valuable not for its cost but for the fact that it was something quite unobtainable in Greece at that time -- a very low-noise preamplifier for 2 metres.

    The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the U.K. and Greece: a personal view Norman F. Joly

  • But it was many years later, using a low noise GASFET preamplifier.

    The Dawn of Amateur Radio in the U.K. and Greece: a personal view Norman F. Joly

  • By offering a broad portfolio of SoC and preamplifier solutions, LSI enables its HDD customers to address all segments of the storage market, from mission-critical enterprise applications and high-capacity desktop PCs to low-power laptops and tape archive solutions.

    unknown title 2011

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