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? 

jfrmusic

Anyone that listen at 113-115db are either def or stupid, or if doing it routinely maybe both?

If you are not def, is it then something you aspirer to be ?

Why would a music lover try to intentionally destroy one’s hearing?

As older we get our hearing for most people deteriorate and unfortunately for many it hinders their ability to function 100% in social gatherings and for some people they choose to redraw a bit from social life.

Also as it is now, there is nothing you can do if getting tinnitus which even is a much bigger problem.

i worry about the younger generation that blast music into their ear canal’s with in-ear headphones, I am guessing that most of them will have big hearing/tinnitus problems before they are 50!

 

Thanks for your comment, but I am pretty sure I understand current and how it relates to solid state amplifiers performance characteristics. Sorry, but the article you refer to is so poorly written as to escape making any sense to me, hats off to you if you can understand the techno babble, with a bit of some kind of marketing. I am familiar with ohms law.

@ghdprentice I'm going with 'apparently not' in this case. The reason, which is pointed out in that article, is that current does not exist without Voltage and the two together make power according to this formula, which is quite simple:

1 Amp times 1 Volt = 1 Watt.

This means that if the amp can make the power, it has the current also. So it makes no difference if the amp is tube, solid state or class D.

When there is talk about current, absent of power, then its nonsense. For example, quite often solid state amps are advertised as having lots of current; not picking on anyone in the industry but I've seen '80 Amps' advertised many times.

Since Power is also (through algebra) equal to Resistance times Amperage squared, let's give the 80 Amps the benefit of the doubt and set Resistance to 1 Ohm. Thus the power is the Amperage squared. In the case of 80 Amps, that's 6400 Watts. To my knowledge there are no amps offered to high end audio that make that kind of power: Amps that make current beyond the power they also make do not exist.

If you think otherwise you are engaging in a myth. That is why I linked the article.

I like the simplicity and purity of the SET. But I also prefer inefficient planar magnetic speakers (Magnepan 0.7 which is all quasi-ribbon because pure ribbons are too fragile). I let a globe 45 SET transformer couple to an 833A run at 1000 Volts and Hammond output transformers. This does not push it to high wattage, but easily drives such speakers well below audible distortion and is as loud as any concert hall.  

@atmasphere  , is it watts that drive the speaker?  (I know that if I put the + & - lead of my vm on the corresponding speaker posts. I get an AC volt reading which varies depending upon volume level.)  But if it is watts that drive the speaker, and every watt is equal to every other watt, what is it that makes speakers sound different with different amps?

Two Futtermans at 135 watts each.

Altecs are 101 db efficiency, 16 ohms.

The can play twice as loud as I could ever tolerate.

see

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