wattage


I have seen prior threads on this, but none recently that can answer how many watts from an amp are truly necessary.
Take an inefficient speaker, say 86 w/db. at 98 db (which will harm hearing when sustained) 16 watts would be required. Even doubling this to account for transients would be available at 32 watts. Strickly
from an engineering standpoint, are more than 40 watts really necessary? No audiophile terms like bloom, and slam needed.
Regards.
RJ
tennisdoc40

Showing 2 responses by kijanki

Signal applied "not phase coherent"?. Do you suggest that amplifier somehow shifts phase in the audio frequency range causing reduction of perceived loudness ???
Ratio of peak to average power required, as Al said, is very
high. Amplifier's power specification alone is only useful
for listening to continuous sine-waves. Otherwise 10W
amplifier with big headroom can sound much louder than 100W
amplifier with small headroom. For instance, in class A amps
headroom is very limited. Higher output bias current would
make amplifier very big, heavy and expensive. Class AB amps
don't have this limitation - headroom can be higher.

In addition power specification are often very vague.
Continuous power of the B&O module (200ASC) in my class D
amp is 40W. FTC Power is 55W. Rowland rates it 200W while
Bel Canto rates it 300W. What is it?