@johnnycamp5 you are absolutely correct, was a bit tiered at that moment..
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?? 😁
- ...
- 56 posts total
@anotherbob Don't get taken in by this pseudo science. It is a con. There is no system that can instantaneously increase power. Musical transients are gone by the time the power is produced. Krell started this when they wanted to appear greener. They stopped making pure Class A amps for which they had been rightly applauded and said their new amps could increase power instantly so that transients could still be correctly reproduced. Further, such a system might not reproduce music consistently because the watt or two that suffices most of the time would not sound the same as 100 or 200 watts suddenly introduced by the amp. I don't have such an amp but I wonder if anyone has noted this. |
@anotherbob - Marketing hype for a couple of different things some amps do. There were some like NAD / Proton (back in the day) which famously used 2 voltage rails in the amps. The high voltage had no staying power, but for short transients could deliver more than the low voltage rails could do. I think this was Class H. Bob Carver’s amps did something like this, using a linear amp which would float among multiple voltage rails. The NAD/Hypex hybrids do this also. A lot of this has to do with federal regulations about how you rate a power amplifier. To combat outrageously useless amplifier specs of the day the FTS imposed regulations about not only stating distortion and power together but also your amp must be preheated. The preheating required a lot more heat sinks to achieve the same wattage rating. As a result, some amplifiers may have significant more headroom than they may show in the power spec alone. To be honest, music is never steady state and a lot of audiophiles with 300 Watt amps never go beyond 30, so there’s a lot to be said about right sizing an amp to your needs. . |
- 56 posts total