This is an article I wrote for Widescreen Review Magazine a few months ago.
Inside Your AVR
Do you know what is inside your electronics? What is a DSP? The output stage? Power supply? FPGA? ASIC? Do these terms have any meaning? I suspect for many of you these are obscure terms. Yet, pick up the brochure for any audio/video product and such buzzwords abound. While it is impossible to convey the true nature of these technologies in an article like this, I think we can become more educated and at least have some high level understanding of what goes on inside your electronics. For this article, I am going to open the top of a premium AVR I purchased back in 2007. At the risk of stating the obvious, you are not going to become a design engineer from reading this one article. But rather, get you started on a journey to know more about what is under the hood and what type of design trade off a manufacturer may make. I hope to do...