What is Floyd Toole saying about extra amplifier power and headroom?

Dynamic headroom means having more power than you need.
If you don’t the amp may clip during dynamic peaks.

If I ran the servers where I work without the dynamic headroom needed to handle peak workloads, they would crash and I be out of a job.

Same concept. Dynamic headroom is your insurance against clipping and yes you need more power and often current to get it with less efficient speakers.


More efficient speakers may still present a difficult load and require more current to sound their best so that alone is not a panacea.

Very large speakers are typically more efficient. Some are also easy loads, some less so.

If you want smaller but capable speakers like Magicos, the amp has to be able to up its game to deliver the goods.

Either way or anything in between can work out top notch. You just have to get the system matched and set up well to meet your needs.

@erik_squires thanks for the links. I read both articles and they have me thinking of the one area in my room I haven't treated, the ceiling. The sounds I'm trying to correct is at admittedly very loud levels, so it's possible that it's creating reflections off the ceiling that don't exist at lower levels. After that, I think I need to look at active crossover to control the LP freq. The JL unit I linked above is fairly pricey. I looked at the Schitt unit in your article but it looks like that's more of an EQ than an active crossover. BTW, the reason I have the JL sub's LP freq at 38hz is that I wanted to minimize the overlap between where the mains drop out and the sub picks up as much as possible. The Minis go down to 37hz. Sounds like the active crossover will give me more precise control of the LP freq so maybe it's worth the price, and actually a deal compared to new monoblocks with extra headroom. Am I on the right track? Really appreciate your responses! 

I may have blurred the two above somewhat but just to be clear current delivery is more about tonal quality as well as articulate and detailed bass with difficult loads. Power is more about headroom and clipping with less efficient speakers. Two different kinds of distortion. Most good quality smaller yet bass extended speakers like Magico Mini are necessarily both less efficient and a difficult load.

Hello diamonddupree,

     The Magico Mini IIs are world class performers as far down as they go down in the audible audio spectrum, which is about 40 Hz according to Magico’s published specs. The fact is, these are extremely high quality stand mounted monitors that may be without equal reproducing music within their less than optimum audible technical range capabilities of about 40Hz to 20,000 Hz, even though they likely extend a handful of Hz deeper at a handful of dbs down.
     In my opinion, the "slight compression in the soundstage at higher levels" you notice are most likely the result of your 2-way speakers’ 7" drivers, even though they are very technologically advanced in design and materials, being required to reproduce the midrange frequencies as well as the mid-bass/deeper bass frequencies simultaneously.
     Of course their rated bass extension is only rated at 40 Hz but these 7" drivers are still being sent even deeper bass frequencies to reproduce by your amp. Since your speakers are 2-way and not 3-way, they lack a crossover network that could send the bass frequencies below a given Hz to a separate woofer driver. Therefore, the 7" combination woofer/midrange drivers simply attempt to reproduce both midrange and bass frequencies up to the limit of their capabilities. When you raise the main volume control, this only increases the demands on these drivers to reproduce not only the midrange frequencies at a higher output level, but also the deeper bass frequencies at a higher output level simultaneously. Also more amp current is required to faithfully reproduce bass than midrange frequencies.
     Not surprisingly, these 7" drivers struggle to do both of these things at the same time. The sonic results? The sound quality levels of both the bass and midrange are compromised, especially as the master volume level is increased, and a compression in the overall soundstage is perceived at a minimum.
I seriously doubt an amp with more power, current or headroom is capable of solving the system sq issues you described. I suggest a better solution would be one of the following in order of effectiveness:

1. The addition of a high quality 4-sub distributed bass array (DBA) system, as briefly mentioned earlier by atmasphere, that matches the high quality of your Magico Mini II main speakers, such as the Audio Kinesis Swarm complete bass system reviewed on the link below by the Absolute Sound:
https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/audiokinesis-swarm-subwoofer-system/

     I understand you don’t think you have the space in your room to accommodate this, however, according to your room diagram I believe you do. The subs are each only 1’x1’x2’ and would be spread around the perimeter of your room with the drivers facing and only 1-2 inches away from the nearest wall. My main speakers only extend down to 35 Hz and this DBA concept works exceptionally well in my 23’x16’ room. It’s a concept that Floyd Toole, Dr. Earl Geddes and other experts recognize as highly effective because Geddes scientifically proved the concept and published his results in a peer reviewed White Paper, which is available online.

2. The addition of a 2nd sub, either another JL F-110 or even the addition of a larger JL F-112 sub. 2 subs typically perform about twice as well as a single sub in most rooms and the overall bass extension is usually perceived as being as deep as the sub with the deepest bass extension capability. The benefits of using multiple properly positioned and configured subs in a room, that begin to be realized with as few as 2 subs, are bass that is smoother, faster, more detailed, more powerful and dynamic as well as being better blended with the main speakers.  These bass qualities are increasingly more apparent as more subs are added to a given room up to a threshold of 4 subs, after which performance gains from additional subs in the given room typically become smaller and more marginal. 
       As you and others have mentioned, using some sort of active crossover filter device that restricts bass frequencies from being sent to the main amp/speakers, simplifies the setting of low-pass and high-pass crossover frequencies and enables subs to be more easily incorporated, can also result in improved overall system sound quality performance.

Tim

"One of the great challenges of this world: Knowing enough about a subject to think you are right, but not enough about the subject to know you’re wrong" - Neil deGrasse Tyson

@noble100 thank you for that. Makes a ton of sense. I've been very pleased with the tightness of the bass coming from the JL sub and I was considering a second one a while back. I think, based on your comments and a few others', that my first order of business is an active crossover to stop the Minis from going below 80hz and letting the JL sub handle those frequencies. I really appreciate your response.