Amp's nominal power rating - any use?


I just paired a couple of Coincident Frankentein monos with my SF Guarneri Homage. The sound is great (fat, rich, dynamic, transparent) and sounds well with any type of music (opera, rock, electronic...). These are 8W monoblocks and sound like with more power or at least the same as my previous fabulous pass aleph 3 (30W class A SS). Of course it depends if tubes not tubes, class A or not, speaker sensitivity, impedance load, room dimensions etc, but what i see is that it's not a relevant criteria at all on its own. Maybe there should be some transformation formula to take into account some of these factors to get some Apparent or Perceived Power, but maybe it would be hard to take into account all factors. Any ideas, opinions, on this?
dongiovanni

Showing 1 response by shiitaki

The issue with power ratings is that there are so many variables, and many ways to test power output. It also takes ten times the power to increase the volume by ten db. If you are happy with what you have, and it's only a matter of worrying about the wattage specifications not aligning up, don't worry about it. As long as the amp can get loud enough without clipping, which sounds bad, you are good to go.