Normal to loud-side for most speakers is around 1 - 2 watts. Figure out what it is for your speakers and multiply by 100 to 200 to cover the peaks without capping out the amp's capacity. And YES, momentary peaks can take that amount of power.
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?
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@ghdprentice I assume it makes a great deal of difference on the individual speaker you are using. I've always heard there is a difference between "tube" watts and SS watts. On this very sight I have read that tube watts are roughly 3 times as powerful as SS watts. To this end I've found this lengthy article penned by Roger Sanders to be quite interesting. Especially as I am driving a set of SoundLab Majestic 745's. Cheers. https://sanderssoundsystems.com/technical-white-papers/172-tubes-vs-transistors |
That’s the issue I was addressing. The meters in my amp are set to freeze at the highest peak reached. So at the end of the night when I check them they never exceed 1 Watt. And that’s with me listening to full Classical orchestral recordings at room filling volume that are very dynamic. So even my large peaks that are musically dynamic do not move the meter past 1 watt. |
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