Quote Originally Posted by BRANDONH
Now I am confused
I am not as technical as most of y'all are and have no idea what a noise floor is.
Is there a laymans term for this? And what effect it has on the overall sound reproduction?
Electronic components all make noise when current is passed through them. If you had a really noisy amp, it would be like listening to fan blade noise, after a while it would be really irritating and could possibly cover up some of your desired music, but we're talking something like a 40dB signal to noise ratio for that to happen.

Signal to Noise ratio is a way to specify the noise floor number using a positive number. If you were just to say noise floor, it wold be a negative number as referenced to the full power output.

In other words as both relate to full output power:

Signal to noise ratio = 100dB

And noise floor = -100dB

It's really the same absolute number.

-Bruce