How can you listen to anything under 200 watt per chnl?
g7trader
Posts: 39
In my living room i now have 230WPC amps before i use to listen to alot of amp/speakers beovox beolab Rotel Yamaha beomaster etc now I look back and think how could I have been an audiophile listening to 30WPC? At that level its all treble and background sounds missing.
Now my Yama P2201 is 230WPC it is room filling vocals, room filling bass guitar full strong midrange can hear alot of intruments in the background speakers are Pioneer HPM 110.
Now my Yama P2201 is 230WPC it is room filling vocals, room filling bass guitar full strong midrange can hear alot of intruments in the background speakers are Pioneer HPM 110.
Answers
Martin Logan LX16s, NAD 1155 preamp and 4155 tuner courtesy of DaddyJT, NAD C352 playing power amp, BJC Belden cables, Technics SL3200, Marantz CD6004 CD player and Audio Technica cartridge courtesy of Drew/Clipdat, Salamander Archetype rack
3.5 watts per channel at my house using loudspeakers with ca. 100 dB per watt @ 1 meter sensitivity. No complaints.
Most consumer & "audiophile" loudspeakers today tend to have low sensitivities. For example 20 dB lower sensitivity would mean that one hundred times as much power is required to drive a loudspeaker to the same SPL output. Realistically, many loudspeakers today are. ca. 85 dB sensitivity; 3.5 watts into 100 dB speakers, in terms of sheer SPL, would equate to about 111 watts into 85 dB speakers.
But does the 10wpc system sound weak and trebly where as the other 1200wpc sounds bassy and warm full of midrange?
Tom
~ The best way to enjoy digital music reproduction is to never listen to good analogue reproduction ~
~ When the law ends, tyranny begins ~
Nope, just a matter of matching amps to speakers. Some speakers require a heavier dose of current, some don't, to reach the same loudness.
Should also add, it depends too on the type of music one listens to. Music with faster transients need some more power to reproduce to make it believable and life size.
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Tonyb answered the question very well. In my case I greatly prefer the Polks over the Khorns mainly because I find horns and long term listening not to my liking.
There was a time when loudspeakers were designed to be acoustically sensitive and electrically efficient (efficiency is the measure of the percentage of electrical power delivered to the speaker which is transduced to acoustic output power). In those days, power was expensive. Now, it is cheap, and the philosophy of loudspeaker design reflects that reality (for better or for worse).
The development of the acoustic suspension "alignment" by Villchur/Acoustic Research in the 1950s was, arguably, the driver for the popularity of low sensitivty loudspeakers. In the case of the classic AR loudspeakers, the Devil's bargain was to give up gobs of sensitivity (and thus amplifier compatibility, in those days) to get good LF performance (qualitatively and quantitatively) in a small (by the standards of that time) package.
But I digress...
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you!
They're also not exactly paragons of low frequency extension, though (nor are my Altecs,
despite being in much, much larger enclosures).
For the OP's benefit (if he or she is still hangin' around this thread), there's a fairly unavoidable loudspeaker design concept that's widely referred to as Hoffman's Iron Law.
1) Bass Extension
2) High Sensitivity
3) Small Enclosure
You can have any pair of those parameters in any given loudspeaker design -- but you cannot have all three.
They're Heresy II's, though and they have revised crossover and driver designs from the original.
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you!
source: http://www.audioheritage.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?4624-Will-cane-grill-cloth-block-highs/page2
The use of a senstive woofer with accordion suspension in a small close enclosure (technicaly, I think, an infinite baffle) limits the LF extension.
I had a pair of Cornwalls for a decade... used mostly with single-ended 2A3 amplification (ca. 3.5 watts per channel; same kind of amplifier I currently use with "FrankenAltecs").
I am content with 3.5wpc from the ACA Monos, 35wpc from my hybrid EL34 AMC and 100wpc from the VTLs I am fostering for Russ.
"Unwad those panties and have a good time man. We're all here to help each other, no matter how it might appear." DSkip
For a reality check think of this. It takes10 times the power to get an increase of 10 DBs. So lets assume you have a 100 watt amp. Most DB displays max out at +10 to +15 DBs but lets assume your amp maxes out at +10DB.
That means when you play music at 0DBs (very loud) you are only using 10 watts.
At -10 DBs (still loud) you are only using 1 watt.
and at -20 DBs (listening level where you can still talk) you are only using 0.1 watt.
And another random thought........going from 100 watts to 200 watts will only get you an extra +3DBs. This is the amount that can usually be heard as being louder but usually this is with a text tone. I doubt anyone could really tell while listening to music. Check it out yourself. Listen to some music and increase the volume by 3DBs. Hear any difference? Maybe / maybe not but you just doubled the amount of watts you were using.
One more......anyone who claims a 100 watt amp is louder than an 80 watt amp is full of it.
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Three 20 amp circuits.
That's a poor presumption.
I can hear a .5dB increase listening to music.
You've got a lot to learn.
"A doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical minority and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a t-u-r-d by the clean end."
President of Club Polk
Adj. "accompanying especially in a subordinate or incidental way"
My new word for the day. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concomitant
And short story regarding efficiency. I was helping out in an old theater that was getting refurbished. They had two big Electro-voice speakers for the sound. I think they had 15" or 18" woofers and a horn. A small battery operated FM radio easily drove them directly and filled the theater. Then I brought in my old generic walkman style tape player that was designed for old not very sensitive headphones. Setting the volume at 2 is max. or more on today's devices, and I think 3 would destroy most of today's small headphones. With that it was like a small rock concert in the theater. As I recall the original theater amp was about 10W and was told that was more than enough. That was a big lesson in efficiency.
With test tones, maybe, I never thought to try, I'll give that a try later, but definitely not with music.
Martin Logan LX16s, NAD 1155 preamp and 4155 tuner courtesy of DaddyJT, NAD C352 playing power amp, BJC Belden cables, Technics SL3200, Marantz CD6004 CD player and Audio Technica cartridge courtesy of Drew/Clipdat, Salamander Archetype rack
I thought the ACA was closer to six watts...
1. I hope I spelled it right!
2. The ol' demo dealers liked to do for Klipschorns was to drive one with the earphone output of a transitor radio. The result (with a loudspeaker with 104-ish dB sensitivity) is pretty striking.
You're just jealous 'cause the voices don't talk to you!
Count me in as being able to hear .5 db increases. My Mcintosh C100's volume control is calibrated in .5 db steps and a .5db change up or down is quite noticeable even to these 62 year old ears. 3db would be 6 steps on the volume control and that is a huge change in the sound. I'm betting there's not a single member here that can't easily hear either of those changes.
This raises the question: is that .5 dB shift on the pre amp stage or the power output stage? I suspect it makes a difference.
Just a quick? If 102db sensitive speakers only need say 3 to 10 watts then why do they ask for 400rms each.. Or is the tube amps diff