Back in the day we found that more speakers (specicially: tweeters) got killed by too SMALL amp that were clipping like crazy when playing louder, and the clipping sent huge amounts of watts to the tweeter. Most tweeters blow at 10W (just throwing a number at it), so a 20watt amp is capable of killing a tweeter (if sending a lot of high frequency clipping noise to the tweeter).
Perception and Watts: Doubling of power
There's a curious rule of thumb, which to my ears seems mostly true:
- To double the perceived volume, you must output 10x more power.
10x power = 10 dB by the way. We've read this as we were buying amps and trying to decide between 100w/channel and 150w/channel. We are told, repeatedly that 50 W difference isn't really that much.
On more than one occasion I've tested this and found it's pretty much spot on. Here's my question:
How can any of us really tell what half as loud, or twice as loud is?
I mean, think about this for a bit. I cannot tell half as bright, or twice as bright, but it seems I actually CAN tell what half as loud is. How does this even begin to work in the ear/brain mechanism?? 😁