Shocked. Need Opinions. How muck power do I need?


I’m moving so of my sound gear around. As a temporary measure, I set up my little Cambridge EVO 75 in my main system. Driving my Dali Mentor 6s in a large room (36x36). Speakers are 9 feet apart and seat is 10 feet from speakers. This 75 water replaced my much more powerful monoblocks. To my shock, the amp drove these speakers just fine. The bass was a little weaker, but perfectly acceptable.  Here’s what I want to know— if 75 watts are enough, will 40 watts do? I’m talking all solid state. What say you?
 

 
 

 

tomaswv

@swede58  yes, JBL 4367 does the trick at 94db 8ohm  and they are set at neutral setting for crossover loads 

In general, the Dali 6 have an impedance of 6 Ohms - that means a high current amp may sound a bit bass heavy - which the Dali's are prone to,

The efficiency of the Dali's is 89 ish if I recall correctly - I think Tube amps would sound best or a Class A amp like Pass or Plinius as second best.  Why?  The Dali's tend to sound lean and could use the harmonic richness of a good tube amplifier.  

A thirty watt tube amp or fifty watt solid state would sound nice.

@ssg308 - If I understand your post, you are saying that the thing that matters more than absolute power output is the ability to supply current in sufficient amounts, so the output voltage across the speakers doesn't sag at the power point being supplied to the load. Of course this can happen simply by overdriving the amp, but the sneaky thing is that speakers present an ever changing load according to the applied frequency. So while the power available might great for say every frequency above 100 hz, there is that impedance dip somewhere in the bass region, say around driver resonance, or cabinet tuning point that changes everything. If the impedance goes too hi then the voltage across the driver can possibly go outside the safe operating envelope for the output transistors, or conversely if the impedance goes very low than the current requirement exceeds the power supply and output devices ability to supply the required current and voltage to the load and something goes POP, maybe its a tweeter, maybe an output transistor, or you blow an amplifier fuse...Having that extra headroom over and above any conceivable listening level you would ever use is a cheap way to protect the equipment. I remember replacing a lot of tweeters when I was using low powered amps at or near clipping.