Think of it this way craigert, electricity is like water. The signal coming out of a component is like the water coming out a pipe. In order for the water to do work, blast off the driveway say, it takes a lot of pressure. That's voltage. But you only have so much water coming in from the street. That's your power supply. This is why components like amps that use a lot of power, they have their own private reservoir called caps. Big amps that drive speakers have huge reservoirs, able to supply water to thirsty speakers. Small amps like a phono stage have very small ones, barely enough to sip through a straw.
Now the music signal, its not a nice steady flow but instead is one powerful surging pulse after another. In order to get a drum whack to sound right, its like trying to blast a rock off your driveway. What do you do? Hold the hose wide open? Then you lose all the pressure. But put your thumb on the end, pressure goes way up, now the stream has all kinds of pressure, blows the rock right off.
Your thumb is impedance. High impedance, high resistance to flow, high pressure, high transient response. Low impedance, low resistance to flow, source component runs out of gas, drains the bass and dynamics right out of the music.
Yeah its more colorful and metaphorical than technically correct, but more than good enough to see you through.
Now the music signal, its not a nice steady flow but instead is one powerful surging pulse after another. In order to get a drum whack to sound right, its like trying to blast a rock off your driveway. What do you do? Hold the hose wide open? Then you lose all the pressure. But put your thumb on the end, pressure goes way up, now the stream has all kinds of pressure, blows the rock right off.
Your thumb is impedance. High impedance, high resistance to flow, high pressure, high transient response. Low impedance, low resistance to flow, source component runs out of gas, drains the bass and dynamics right out of the music.
Yeah its more colorful and metaphorical than technically correct, but more than good enough to see you through.