I’ve been looking at SF speakers and the dealer I’ve been talking to has mentioned several times that “These speakers need a lot of watts to sound good!” One of the speakers I am looking at is the Amity G5 and he said that it needed 600 watts to really sing. And I immediately thought of you and had to stifle a laugh. He’s talking and I’m imagining you with 600 X 2 watts of ARC tube equipment.
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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@mlsstl I'll be the first to admit how little I know about much of this hobby. I believe what Sanders is trying to get across is the fact that many people are oblivious to the fact their amps may be clipping and are under powered, and that their system could sound even better with a higher powered amp?. I suspect you don't need to be playing at excessive volume to be stressing an amp. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, that the load the speaker presents to the amps has a lot to do with it. I owned a pair of Acoustic Zen Crescendo Mark ll. When you look at the impedance graph, that speaker is almost a flat line at 6 ohms. Extremely easy on your amp. My current speakers are the opposite. Dipping as low as 1 ohm which is a punishing load. Luckily my amps are stable at 1 ohm. In summary, I found the Sanders article very interesting and will assume he knows a lot more about this than I do. I don't think it ever hurts to read the lengthy papers written by the designers and builders. Cheers, |
As I think I remember @ghdprentice typing, I have also read that maybe not all watts are created equal. |
👍 @immatthewj I did mention that and I think @curiousjim ’s dealer is trying to make Sonus Faber sound more like Wilson. I think he is trying to put so much fast current to them (and probably a lean midrange) to increase slam. These speakers are made to reproduce natural sounding music not to do shock and awe. I know it is hard to attribute intent to others. But I have heard SF with very high powered solid state amps, they do make them sound better to me. |
@immatthewj Actually, all watts are the same. There's a scientific calculation that defines a watt. It's all the other stuff that makes the difference. |
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