Watts and power

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.

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with amplifier architecture and pleasant soft-clipping. Nope, it couldn't possibly be that. It probably has nothing to do with the rated power at your speakers lowest impedance either.

2 watts of SS power to equal 1 watt of tube power

Instead of starting a new thread, I thought I would drop in a question on these same issues: I've been running a Nuforce STA200 with two 8ohm speakers, horn loaded, so the sound emerges with little effort and the amp runs cool. However, now I'm buying Tekton Moabs and they push a 4 ohm load. The Nuforce is stated to be suited to 8 ohms, not 4. The Moabs are efficient, running at a rated 

• 98dB 2.83V@1m sensitivity

If the speakers run easy, what am I doing to my 8ohm amp, were I to hook them up...?