Good ear. Triod is much better on my canary monoblocks as well exactly the difference you found with you audio reseach
Perception and Watts: Doubling of power
There's a curious rule of thumb, which to my ears seems mostly true:
- To double the perceived volume, you must output 10x more power.
10x power = 10 dB by the way. We've read this as we were buying amps and trying to decide between 100w/channel and 150w/channel. We are told, repeatedly that 50 W difference isn't really that much.
On more than one occasion I've tested this and found it's pretty much spot on. Here's my question:
How can any of us really tell what half as loud, or twice as loud is?
I mean, think about this for a bit. I cannot tell half as bright, or twice as bright, but it seems I actually CAN tell what half as loud is. How does this even begin to work in the ear/brain mechanism?? 😁
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First you have to understand there are quality 100 watts of power and there are garbage 100 watts of power. If all you are concerned about is the decibels or loudness of the music come over to my house and I will hook my Sansui 7070 and the Bose 901’s sitting in their original boxes. It will play so loud your ears will ring for days and it will sound like garbage. Then I will play my 80 watt monos into my Vandersteen’s and not only will they play loud but it will sound beautiful to boot. They did not name the company first watt as a gimmick. |
I can’t count how many times I’ve read or heard people erroneously claim that a more powerful amp sounds better. If that were true, a 300b "flea watt" amp would sound terrible. |
Lots of interesting discussion here, of course, but I really did just want to ask, how can we tell what twice as loud is? I mean, I think I can, and it happens to match 10 dB. WHY? Our visual systems however seem very good at seeing twice the length or half the length, or finding the mid point on a line. Kind of weird that we also have a sense for half or twice as loud. |
I also never really understood what was meant by “perceived” as sounding twice as loud…I figured it was too subjective, but apparently there are some safe generalizations too be made with the way human ears work. @mrskeptic I agree |
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