2. amps-preamps
  3. 190231-188464

Watts! How many do we need?

Got a new amp. Accuphase P-4600. It’s great. I love it. 
150 watts into 8 ohms, 300 watts into 4 ohms and it has meters so I can see wattage. Have them set on freeze so I can see the highest wattage during the session.

My Harbeth speakers are not very efficient. Around 86db. Their impedance is an even 6 ohms dipping no lower than 5.8 ohms. 

Playing HiRes dynamic classical recordings  ( Tchaikovsky , Mahler) at room filling volumes I have yet to exceed 1watt.. 

Amps today offer a lot of watts some going to 600 even 1200 watts. Even if you have inefficient speakers with an impedance that dips down to 2 ohms do we need all this wattage or should we be focusing on current instead? 

jfrmusic
jfrmusic OP
257 posts
 

@westcoastaudiophile

Where did you see that the P4600 is Class A up to 20W?

westcoastaudiophile
274 posts
 

@jfrmusic I looked amp spec and schematics. A/B class P4600 increased idle power and number of output transistors to 12 in each channel, matching their A class amps. 20W is estimate of peak power for linear output transistors range, for both channels combined (2x10W)

jfrmusic OP
257 posts
 

@westcoastaudiophile

The specs on their site say 6 transistors per channel. Still don’t see how you com to this conclusion. They don’t mention any Class A wattage. 

westcoastaudiophile
274 posts
 

@jfrmusic 6 transistors / leg, 12 total pnp-npn power devices per channel. I calculated A class wattage using p4600 schematic. 

westcoastaudiophile
274 posts
 

@jfrmusic spec with design details for p4600 https://www.accuphase.com/cat/p-4600_e.pdf 

More to discover