If you had 300 watts instead of 80 you would only have 6 more db. Watts and power are not your fundamental issue.
Basic question about power/watts
Hi everyone - I have a question that I can't seem to wrap my head around.
I purchased a pair of Magnepans a few months back. Honestly, I do not like them. They have their moments but overall, pffft.
So, related to this, I keep reading from various Maggie owners you need TONS of power to make these things sing rather than squawk. I bought a new amp that is rated at 80 wpc at 4ohms. This, I realize, is low power when I see these guys saying they are running some crazy amount like 600 watts per channel. Here is my actual question:
When you are listening to your speakers at a normal volume, the wattage you are using is not near the POSSIBLE output, correct? My 80 wpc is unbearable with the volume at the 11 o'clock position. Why does a person need or want 600 watts? I suspect I am missing something here. Maybe this has to do with why I dislike my Magnepans. Somebody take a moment to set me straight?
Thanks!
50 responses Add your response
a lot late to the party. Whenever I hit the stereo shops here, I listen to about everything, b and w, songs Fabre, with Mac amps, etc etc, I will stay there for 2 hours. I love the magnepan airy sound, guitar sounds so real, voices, then there is the kick drum, this is where boys and men separate $$$$$$$$
**as mentioned, patience and relax. If it takes an extra few months or longer to save a small bit more money, so be it. I sat on 5K as I saved it, huge wad in my hiding place, I then started gathering info, reading a lot, talking to the fine people in here,asking tons of questions. I bought used, and have a very very good pair of amplifiers, with matching pre and cd spinner. Amps were a great deal, pre was also a fair price, cd spinner was 100$ over what I wanted, but, if you want something, get it before someone else does.
maggies will take gobs of power, and sound amazing, as far as a bass driver, mentioned above, this will totally help. Get 250-300W RMS, you can thank me later. The Bryston is a great idea, also the crown, or the QSC. the crown and QSC are built better. or try the Avantones newest amp cla-400 about 1K new. Wish I knew this was being released I ,..n remind!
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It ain't you amp. Don't waste your time chasing ghosts. If you can play them loud enough, and by your description too loud, without obvious clipping, then you don't have an issue, unless you are using a tube amp. Tube amps and maggies are not good bedfellows. Magnepans may dip down to 3 ohms, but they are close to being a resistor as you could ask for for a speaker. The impedance from 20-20 may not vary more than an ohm and phase is flat too.
@mlsstl gave you the answer in the first post. Wonderful speakers when dialed in and the room works for them. Awful in every other case and that is the case more often than not. |
First, understand that speakers are not a pure resistive load, so "watts" from the amplified doesn't equate directly to "watts" at the speaker. Most amps give rated power into strictly resistive load (e.g. 8 ohms, 4 ohms, etc.) and if the speaker was a resistor, then yes "watts is watts". However, since the speaker receives an A/C signal, and there are various elements in the speaker that have capacitance or inductance, you need to think in terms of "impedance" not resistance. Meaning, the signal voltage and signal current at the speaker will not be in-phase (i.e. max or min current won't align with max or min voltage), and that difference is called the phase angle. For a real world speaker, the phase angle can reach +/- 45 degrees (for a resistor, that angle is zero). So the actual power delivered to the speaker is a function of the cosine of the phase angle, and this is basically the Power Factor, and the power supplied by the amp. So this can be as low as 0.707 for a real world speaker, meaning the amp must supply ~4 watts at the output devices for the speaker to "see" 1 watt. Worse, the phase angle will change for different frequencies, so the frequency response (not just overall volume) is also affected when the amp can't supply sufficient power. So you have to figure that a 50w @ohm amp/receiver is likely to be capable of less than 12 watts for a given "4-ohm" speaker at worse-case (relative to power factor) frequencies. Better quality amp manufacturers will take phase angle into consideration and have a sufficient number of output devices and power supply stiffness to accommodate the increase in instantaneous current load requirements (headroom available) for most real-world speakers. Can't comment on the Maggies specifically since I'm not a dipole kind of guy. Good luck! |
Dear Tim in Texas, |
OP, I would take your time and enjoy the process. Don’t be in a hurry. It is important to read through the hype and think about what you value. Make it a fun and calculated process. There is a lot of ambiguity in what vendors are selling, what you want, and how it will work together.
Slow, thoughtful decisions are the way to go. As you develop a solid sense of what you want, your ability to differentiate subtleties in sound quality will develop. So, for instance, adding a subwoofer could be a great solution for you… for now. Then 10 or 15 years from now that would be something that doesn’t work at all for you.
Read, read, read… think about what you are hearing and what you want. When you are sure you have found a match… act. Then evaluate, did what you expect happen? Listen for a few hundred hours. Then plan you next step. |
I own Maggie .7s and drive them with a Rogue Sphinx (100w@8 ohms and 200w@4 ohms). I bet you could get a used one for $1,000 or less. You could always get something with more wattage, but I will guarantee you it is a good combo enjoyed by many others. Trust me, you probably want a good Class D amp that won’t break the bank or heat your room. I also added a sub, an REL 9i I found at a good price, and the results are very satisfying. Last, be sure you have a good clean source (a DAC, it sounds like in your case) feeding your amp, because you WILL hear from the Maggies what your source gives them. I can recommend the Musical Fidelity V90 DAC at $299.I owned one before I got my (budget-busting) PS Audio Directstream, which I bought in a moment of profligacy. But it sounds really good. |
I know Maggies fairly well and I own a pair of .7s. I've used a lot of different amps on various set-ups with Maggies. The budget solution is a Musical Fidelity integrated. A M3si will work but a M5si would be better. Don't let the 85wpc of the M3 scare you away, they have good reserve power. The buy once cry once option is the M5si. |
@koestner No, I don't think so. It's more like damming a river and diverting what you need, and letting the rest flow away. |
The difficulty with Maggie’s and subwoofers is the integration. The Maggie’s are really really fast… dynamic woofers are slow. The only great integration I have heard is really big Maggies with lots of power. This can be subtle… so may definitely not be a problem for the OP. One of the reasons I moved to all dynamic speakers is the inability to create a really coherent sound top to bottom using planar and dynamic. |
Blunt, but truthful. Wise counsel. Charles
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I’m afraid at a $1000 budget you may be doomed to failure. Not only because of the amp, but also because you apparently also need a preamp — do not neglect the importance of the preamp. Your most cost-effective option is probably an integrated amp. Here’s a Plinius — it puts out 120Wpc into 8 Ohms and I can’t find its output into 4 Ohms, but Plinius amps tend to have pretty robust power supplies so it’s probably close to double the power down there, which should be adequate. https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649854543-plinius-9100-integrated-amplifier/ FWIW, and best of luck. |
Consider a used Bryston. I had a Bryston 3BSST on Magnepan Tympani II and MG IIIAs, which both sounded wonderful. The SST even drove new Quads reasonably well. Haven't tried the previous ST series or the later SST squared, but the first series, 3B, is dull by comparison. But I have also used DIY 40WPC Class A on an MMW-DWM combination for the HT, and it too sounds wonderful. It's the quality of your power, much more than the quantity. JJSS is absolutely right - the speakers are a high end product, and precisely transmit the signal they are given. That is where you need to spend money - on your electronics, not cables, not speakers. IMO. |
Whoever told you that Maggies don't pair well with a sub was extremely confused. In fact, Maggies (except maybe the 30.1s) should ALWAYS be paired with a sub so the sub can handle the low Hz and the Maggies don't have to work as hard. Then that ribbon tweeter will really sing (pun intended) for you. |
tim - add’l info useful couple other questions - what stands supporting the lil maggies? - the stock stands under the lrs/lrs+ and .7 really do the speaker no favors... see/search magnarisers - a pic of your room and setup would be immensely helpful to help us help you one overarching thing i would say to you, is that the unfortunate truth of the matter is that lil maggies need EXCELLENT ancillary equipment upstream, especially the amp (yours is entirely insufficient at this point to let the speakers show what they can do, sorry to say... the pioneer receiver, used as amp or preamp, needs to be replaced) --- it is one of the huge ironies of maggies and their low-cost-of-entry speakers at 800-1000-1500 a pair... the customer buys them, then they need 3--5 thousand bucks of upstream gear to make them do what they are capable of doing... 😥 |
Hi everybody! First off, thank you all so much for your thoughtful answers. I read all of them several times (often times more lol) and learned a lot. I realized after reading, I should have supplied more info. First, the speakers... They are the MG . 7- not a way up there model. The s/n is 155899-1&2. A gentleman asked for this info. To another response, yes, I have done all the "Maggie things" in regards to placement. It is no joke when you say a 1/4. " adjustment makes a difference. I read all I could find and dinked with them for a solid week. They ended up roughly 4' out, towed in, tweeters in and 9' apart. The amp part... This is where it gets weird. When I first got them, I put the them on my Pioneer AVR. This model (vsx-834) has a 4 ohm option. When I fired it all up I was underwhelmed. I sort of expected this. I will say however, the 834 did not have any trouble driving the Maggie's. Never got hot though I did have to crank the volume a bit. In everything I read, I knew I was supposed to have a lot more power, in particular, current. Due to my limited budget, I bought an old geezer Adcom amp that was mentioned a number of times. Using the preouts from my AVR, I fired it up. It was a wall of sound. Yes, it was loud and to my ear, rather unlovely. In a weeks time, one channel of the Adcom failed. I didn't cry, heck, that thing was only a couple hundred bucks and was new when I was in highschool. Tossed it into the garbage. I did learn the . 7's can get very loud. So, back to the direct connection with the AVR. This time I added a 12' Klipsch sub. It was an epiphany of sorts. Suddenly, the . 7's sounded warm, rich and balanced. I was delighted and a bit surprised. I had continually read that Maggie's can't blend well with a sub. That, apparently (to me anyway) was a crock. Problem solved, right? Nope. I want my HT back! I had, the whole time, been in two channel mode. Now I will need two separate systems. In trying to decide what I need on my thin budget I stumbled across another Pioneer product.. the integrated A-10 AE. I kid you not, it was 200 bucks new. The specs claim 50wpc @4ohm (in my op, I stated 80, my mistake) and 30@ 8ohm. Anyway, this thing is barebones. Just two channel, designed for strictly music playback. I assumed, incorrectly, there would be pre-outs. No, it truly a basic 2 channel amp. Add this to my heap of mistakes lol. I hooked it up anyway and you know what? It actually is sounding good! Great sound stage, detailed in most respects. Vocal performances such as Dominique Fils-Aime are remarkable. I am able to achieve the volume I want without cranking this thing up very high. But...... But .... But..... The lower end is blah and weak. On just about anything I listen to other than vocal performances and chamber type classical, they are uninspired to say the least. So this is how I landed at this point and posed my original question. How is this cheap-ass integrated amp doing ok with rather low power? And, where do I go from here? My thought, building on what I discovered while running a sub, would be to buy two Emotiva 8" subs using the line level input and outputs. It seems this might work as I can control the crossover from these units. Or do I scap that idea and work with something else? If money were not an issue, I am sure I could just buy my way into sonic bliss. I realize no matter what, the . 7's need a sub (s). So, given the financial constraints of say, a thousand bucks, what might any of you do with these Maggie's? Just a bit more info. I only hard wire stream at the moment via Qobuz. I do not have any interest in vinyl. I am CD capable but meh... to lazy to dig thru the 1,000's of discs. My dedicated listening room is, I believe, near perfect. 19x26, wall to wall carpet, minimal furnishings, no female (she has her own living room). Also, I never had a chance to audition these speakers. It is a 450 mile r/t to the nearest dealer for me. I live rather rural. I bought them on the glowing reviews. I knew going in they were difficult at times to deal with. Again, thanks for reading and responding. Y'all are great. |
All too often we focus on only the watts per channel number. There is so much more that make up the power of an amp. One of the best explanations is relating it to a car engine(if you understand cars of course). Cars have torque ratings and horsepower ratings. People like to focus on the hp (watts per channel) numbers snd not the toque (internal power supply). I can give you a car with 1000 Hp that will go zero to sixty in 3 seconds, then I can give you a tractor that will take a day to go zero to sixty but has all the torque to pull a plow and rip tree stumps from the ground. This leads to we’re a compromise has to happen and with stereo amps especially. While watts per channel are the end result you need to see what the quality snd power behind those watts are. Matching speaker efficiency to your amp will influence the end product. If the first watt is not good everyone after it will be bad as well. |
TONS of good advice here. Wow! So glad that most posters actually understand what is going on here. While most all are on point, @misstl has a superb post. The "more info needed" posts are also on point. As a former dealer who set up MANY pairs of Maggies in MANY types of rooms, please read these posts and CALL YOUR DEALER. He or she is going to provide the most appropriate help for you since a visit to your room is key. Best of luck--no box is as accurate as Maggies, so keep working on it. Hopefully your room will be able to handle them. Cheers! |
@audiojan nailed it and supplemented by @jmalen123 and in general terms you have to look at solid state power. |
I don’t have any experience with electrostatics, but I was meh about my old B&W 803 D2 speakers when paired with pretty much any popular amp from McIntosh, Moon, Bryston, etc. Sound on occasion was harsh in the midrange. Some tracks I couldn’t even play. I know HiFi and poor recordings don’t mix, but these weren’t poor recordings. Then thanks to these boards I found the Diablo 300 from Gryphon. When I picked one up, suddenly I loved my speakers! Just goes to show how much difference an amp can make… |
@timintexas I think part of the issue is that the amps ratings are given for continuous, static, steady-state power. When delivering continuous, steady-state power, then power can be rated in Watts and measured as current delivered at a certain voltage across a certain resistance and/or given off as heat. The real issue with your situation is that the amp’s rating is only a starting point; all it means is that it can furnish 80 Watts into 8 Ohms of impedance. Impedance is measured in Ohms, but it is defined as resistance in an AC (not DC) circuit. The music signal is AC and inductors (like speaker coils) and capacitors (like power supply capacitors and capacitors that ‘couple’ one stage to another present resistance which dependent on the the frequency of the signal. An inductor’s impedance varies directly with the frequency; a capacitor’s impedance varies inversely. Music presents a host of frequencies all at once. But I digress. The point I most wanted to make is that once the DC bias has been set for tubes or bipolar transistors, there is little that is steady state about driving a set of speakers like the Magnepans. The difficulty they present to the amplifier is that their resistance (impedance) they offer to the amp is ‘spastic’ as one person put it above. For one frequency they might offer 2 Ohms of resistance (usually lower notes), for another it may be 16 Ohms; meanwhile the amp’s designer may have as many as five voltage rails inside the amp, each with it’s own power supply which the amp is supposed to switch in and out as needed depending on the load it is presented. A speaker’s spastic impedance curve can simply overwhelm the amp that hasn’t got gobs of reserve power stored in capacitor banks and/or mediated by impedance matching output transformers or the like. Considering things from the speaker side, The manufacturer may slap a rating like ‘4 Ohms, 255 Watts’ on a speaker, but unless you can see an impedance trace for a relevant frequency spectrum, the figure means very little, except it is going to take more power to drive it than an 8 Ohm speaker. In my opinion, for which there is no fee, if you’re serious about listening to the Maggie’s, you need to start with the question, ‘Can anyone recommend an amplifier that can drive my speakers?’ Add the exact model number, and, if possible date of manufacture or S/N. You could add stipulations like preference for tubes or solid state, balanced or unbalanced connections, phono stage (or not), budget, etc You can post a description about your system under ‘Virtual Systems,’ but you must include a photo. Good Luck!
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Hi timintexas! Your amp is probably clipping and the Maggies will reveal that to you by sounding awful. They are unfogiving of poor input signals. The Maggies are a straight, low impedance load. Not many amps can really feed a flat 4 ohm load. Depending on which model you have, the Maggies may be closer to 3 ohms. Check you amp's ratings. If the power into 4 ohms is NOT double the power into 8 ohms, the amp may have a problem with the Maggies. Maggies are not efficient by any stretch of the imagination. Most commercial speakers run around 86 db sensitivity (spl). Maggies are closer to 80 db.; too bad, but pretty close to true. That means they need about four times the power than the average speaker. Watch the meters on a tape deck while playing music. Watch for a difference of 10 db between various musical passages. That difference requires a 10X power increase from your power amp. A real peak can easily require 20 db more "juice." That's 100 X the power for an instantaneous burst of sound. Suppose you amp is running along nicely at 8 watts, that should be getting close to "loud" on a average system. Somebody hits a drum, blasts a trumpet, or knocks over a chair and you need 800 watts for that 20 db bump! Ouch! That's why people have huge wattage amps. 200 watts is only 3db (the smallest difference in loudness the average person can hear) louder than 100 watts, which is only 3 db louder than 50 watts, which is only . . . etc., until you realize that 200 watts is only 20 db lounder than 2 watts! Watch those meters again - 20 db sounds only about 3 times louder to the ear. Suddenly, you realize what all the talk about amplifier headroom is all about. An amp, frequently asked for higher power than it is comfortably provide, is going to sound bad. Period. You have seen reviews quietly mentioning that you need a serious amp for Maggies. They will never sound dynamic and smack you in the chest when the cannons go off in the 1812 Oveture, but - with the right amp - they will give you detail and clarity that few other speakers can approach. Now you can understand why some folks are so enthusiastic about high efficiency speakers! A speaker with a 100db spl (Zu Audio, Klipsh, and a few more - not many) rating needs only one one-hundreth ( yes, 1/100th) of the power that Maggies need! Those speakers are owned by the guys with the 9 watt (or even less) tube amps! Put one of those speakers on your 200 watt amp and you will get absolutely awesome dynamics! Happy Listening! |
40 watts is plenty. However, not all 40 watt sources are created equal. If you have a 40 watt amp with a huge power supply and all the current capability, you'll be fine. but if your 40 watt amp is a typical amp with just bearly what it takes to get a 40 wpc rating, it probably won't handle the heavy load the your speakers are. But if you buy a 600 wpc amp, you can be pretty sure that at lower power it has all the power and current necessary to excel at the lower power. Make sure your 40 wpc amp is getting adequate power. it should be plugged directly into the wall or something with high current like a PSAudio power plant. 10 awg power cord. avoid the passive power conditioners. Jerry |
Power (watts) = Voltage X Current A 200hp motorcycle is fast A 200hp tractor is strong Current amps are strong Voltage amps are fast (over simplification, I know…) The circuit design, type of amp (SS or tube) and class of the amp (A, A/B or D) dictates how that power is made and if it’s voltage, or current based This is where system synergy is of paramount importance
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Power doubling from 8 to 4 ohms means very little. The simple fact is that low impedance speakers or speakers with a really spastic impedance curve give most amplifiers a really hard load for them to drive. Sometimes this cant be avoided, but when it can and the designer still chooses to make the speaker low impedance it is really a design flaw and shows a lack of amplifier understanding or shows that this designer is catering to the false belief, created by this industry, that double the power trumps all other considerations. I dont think that the weird impedance of Maggies can be avoided.
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As a former Maggie owner, a couple of comments: 1) Dipole speakers interact differently with rooms than box speakers. Positioning is critical and, sadly, some rooms are just not a good fit for Maggies. That's why I sold mine -- I moved and the room in the new house just didn't work for them. 2) The position of the volume knob on the amp tells you almost nothing about the amount of power being used. That is dependent on the voltage output of the source and the input sensitivity of the amp. My volume knob is generally at 2 or 3 o'clock for a listening volume of around 85 dB. That's my "loud" while others prefer to list at 95 dB or even over 100. With a different source/pre/amp I might being hitting the same actual volume with a much different setting on the volume knob. 3) Maggies are a low-impedance load at 4 ohms. A typical solid state amp puts out the same voltage at 4 ohms or 8, but the amperage (current) doubles at 4 ohms. The simplest test to see if an amp is good with Maggies is to check to see if the amp's wattage rating doubles when going from 8 ohms to 4. Many amps don't do this. You didn't say which make/model of new amp you bought. You also didn't give any indication of your preferred listening volume. As noted above, one person's "loud" is another's "moderate." |
Yep, as mentioned above it is about high current more so than watts… altough there is a rough correlation. A high current amp will double the wattage between 16 ohm loads, 8 ohm loads and 4 ohm loads. Current is about the number of electrons available at an instant for transients.
Under powered planar speakers sound flat, because they require lots of electrons flowing through them. The amp needs massive power supplies. The other thing is that planar speakers like Maggie’s are extremely sensitive to placement. They can sound terrible without careful placement. I have owned planar of some kind for over 30 years… and a 1/16th of an inch move can significantly Impact the sound. Photos of your system would be very helpful. There is a place under your user ID. |
Yeah, I think it’s likely your amp isn’t up to the task. As far as Watts, it’s about headroom and allowing the amp to work in its comfort zone. Many amps will not be at their best when being pushed to deliver near their max output level, and it’s good to have extra power in reserve for when loud peaks occur in the music. If you’re running near an amp’s peak power level it can sound “strained” whereas if you’ve got plenty of power there will be more a sense of “effortless” sound. Hope this helps answer your question. If it was me I’d hop on this if it’s in your budget — awesome amp that will drive the crap outta your Maggies... https://www.usaudiomart.com/details/649833271-mccormack-dna-225-power-amp/ |
I concur with power and watts not 'all being the same'. About a year ago I was listening to a Audio Research integrated amp rated at 80 watts playing Sonus Faber Olympica Nova Vs and it sounded awesome. I also listened to McIntosh 462 drive the speakers. They both could easily create 75 db of sound and the sound quality difference was more of ARC tube sound versus McIntosh sound - not the 'power'.
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It's not necessarily about the power output, but rather the ability to delivery lots of current at a low impedance. Also, not all amps are created equal to 80W from a HT receiver is VERY different from 80W from a high end amp...
As mesh mentioned, we simply need more info to really be able to point you in the right direction. |
