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?
Double the power will increase volume by 3dB (+23% perceived loudness) |
Not to sound repetitive but it is ALL about current, and damping factor! You only live once. Why go backwards? Is it just the form size? GanFeT solves that! Although that's NOT current as we all appreciate. Thats Pass Labs, Dan D, Mark Levinson, darTZeel... And many more... Hegel has unbelievable dampening factors of 2000!!! |
@kijanki is correct. 3db not 1db. |
In the context of the OP’s speakers and listening room it may not be obvious at first how much power/which amp is really needed, until the perceived experience sets in through a variety of different amps. Crank it as loud as you could possibly want, and then some, and then try and assess whether there’s a sense of headroom still (the limitation here may as well be the Dali’s). Knowing what proper headroom can do in these situations requires of one to, well, know about it through actual experience; what may seem at first like (proper) headroom, if it even registers as a priority, could easily be challenged in another, more capable speaker/amp context. Or, maybe the proper headroom scenario turns out to be of secondary importance in the bigger scheme of things, and it really just comes down to the preferred overall sound at "normal" or more typical listening levels, even if it means giving up ultimately control and a sense of ease at higher SPL’s. If you can have both, however, that would be the preferred scenario. Just today listened to the Leben CS-300F (~15W per channel) with a pair of hORNS Universum speakers, and it proved plenty capable and very lively in moderately sized spacings and a speaker sensitivity closing in on 100dB’s (in this case with the Eminence Kappa 15C as the woofer element; the later iteration uses a less sensitive woofer at ~95dB’s). Remember, your Dali’s would need some 20x more all-things-being-equal power here for the same perceived SPL, and even so the Leben with the Universum’s would likely seem like a small monster be comparison. |
