Shocked. Need Opinions. How muck power do I need?


I’m moving so of my sound gear around. As a temporary measure, I set up my little Cambridge EVO 75 in my main system. Driving my Dali Mentor 6s in a large room (36x36). Speakers are 9 feet apart and seat is 10 feet from speakers. This 75 water replaced my much more powerful monoblocks. To my shock, the amp drove these speakers just fine. The bass was a little weaker, but perfectly acceptable.  Here’s what I want to know— if 75 watts are enough, will 40 watts do? I’m talking all solid state. What say you?
 

 
 

 

tomaswv

Showing 1 response by knotscott

It depends. All amps and watts are not created equal, all speakers and speaker impedances are different, and our volume preferences are different. You only need enough power to drive your speakers to the volume levels you prefer in your room. Headroom is nice if you push dynamic passages to higher volumes, but most of the time I don’t come close to the limits of my amps.

Even with speakers of average sensitivity (~ 89db), over the years I’ve gone from a high of 255 watts per channel (Hafler DH500) down to about 17 watts per channel (tube triode), and my current amps sound much nicer to me than any other more powerful amps I’ve owned. In fairness, for bass heavy passages an ample size SS amp tends to handle big bass peaks on large woofers better than my small tube amps do, but that’s one aspect of the overall sound spectrum (below 80hz in my case)