First you have to understand there are quality 100 watts of power and there are garbage 100 watts of power. If all you are concerned about is the decibels or loudness of the music come over to my house and I will hook my Sansui 7070 and the Bose 901’s sitting in their original boxes. It will play so loud your ears will ring for days and it will sound like garbage. Then I will play my 80 watt monos into my Vandersteen’s and not only will they play loud but it will sound beautiful to boot. They did not name the company first watt as a gimmick.
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?? 😁