Watts and power


Can somebody break it down in layman's terms for me? Why is it that sometimes an amp that has a high watt rating (like, say, a lot of class D amps do) don't seem to always have the balls that much lower rated A or AB amps do? I have heard some people say, "It's not the watts, it's the power supply." Are they talking about big honkin' toroidal transformers? I know opinions vary on a speaker like, say, Magnepans - Maggies love power, right? A lot of people caution against using class D amps to drive them and then will turn around and say that a receiver like the Outlaw RR2160 (rated at 110 watts into 8 ohms) drives Maggies really well! I'm not really asking about differences between Class D, A, or AB so much as I am asking about how can you tell the POWER an amp has from the specs? 
128x128redstarwraith
audiozenology"I do know for a fact it puts out 75% more power into 2 ohms than it does into 4 ohms."
clearthink That is a very interesting statement, assertion, and claim how do you know this to be true? This is like you’re other pronouncements where you state something as ’fact" but offer no proof


He has no idea.
If what he said were true everyone that calls themselves an audiophile would be using them, and there would be no need for Krell’s, Gryphon’s Agostino’s, ect that can come close doubling from 4 to 2ohm, we all be using this $349 3000w Behringer he’s touting or similar. Like I said, he has no idea, all he's good for is beating his chest and stalking.

Cheers George
There are two types of people:

  1. Those who know how to use Google (and other references), can sift through results using sufficient knowledge to reach accurate conclusions and consult industry friends to cross-reference.
  2. Those who insult others, but cannot back up their insults.


I don't know any audiophile who would make putting 75% more power into 2 ohms than 4 ohms their defining criteria for purchasing an amplifier. Do you?

The idea that doubling power is important springs from the concept that loudspeakers are ’voltage driven’. What this means isn’t that the speaker is driven by voltage (despite the expression), it means that the power that drives the speaker is such that the voltage aspect of the power is constant regardless of the load. (Voltage is an aspect of power just as current is; 1 watt equals 1 volts times 1 amp.)


IOW such an amplifier is termed a ’voltage source’.


The thing is, an amplifier **DOES NOT** have to double power as impedance is halved in order to act as a voltage source!!


Tube amplifiers can behave as voltage sources (after all, the this idea was originated by MacIntosh and ElectroVoice back in the 1950s) and they certainly don’t ’double down’... But they **can** cut their power in half as impedance is *doubled* and that is how they manage being a voltage source. The thing is a solid state amp does that as well. Its only at **Full Power** where 'doubling down' might make a difference and right after that is clipping, so its not that big of a deal since the amp really should not be running anywhere near full power if its a good match with the speaker.


So in a nutshell the ability of an amplifier to double power as impedance is halved is not what makes for a good sounding amp, and it may not be important at all; certainly with most speakers on the market its not. In fact the number of speakers that have horrendous amplifier-torturing load impedances (and phase angles) is actually pretty limited. Its a simple fact that the harder you make an amplifier work, the more distortion it makes so its unlikely that a speaker that is horrible to drive is going to sound like real music regardless of the amplifier employed.


So the whole thing is a bit of red herring.

And this one🤷‍♂️, well what can I say but, new/old product protection mode?

Looks like we'll never see an amp from him that can give hopefully give more than 50% wattage from 4ohms down to 2ohms especially the "old amps" the "new amp" when it released "may"??  if all the stars are lined up.

The classic statement from him was,  "Our OTLs do a nice job on the Wilson Alexia"
This is what that would look like (amp being the bulge).
  https://images.boredomfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/14-woman-sleeps-with-python-731x457.jpeg
   
Cheers George  

I earned a living for my entire adult life as an electronics technician. I have a "First Class" radio telephone operators license. Most people today don't even know what that is, but once upon a time it meant something. I go back to a time when we used "slide rules". I mention all of this for a reason, one of them is the fact that I know formulas up the "ying yang".

For years I had a 150 watt per channel SS amp. Presently I have 70 watt tube monoblocks. I can't tell the difference in power. That's because neither of them went to school and don't even know "Ohms law"

Audio pertains to what you hear, while electronics pertains to formulas you work out on paper. I could hear those amps, but I never heard a single solitary formula.

Those amps and my ears told me that it takes 2 watts of SS power to equal 1 watt of tube power. Don't blame them, they never went to school.