2. amps-preamps
  3. 153225-130247

Watts and power

Can somebody break it down in layman's terms for me? Why is it that sometimes an amp that has a high watt rating (like, say, a lot of class D amps do) don't seem to always have the balls that much lower rated A or AB amps do? I have heard some people say, "It's not the watts, it's the power supply." Are they talking about big honkin' toroidal transformers? I know opinions vary on a speaker like, say, Magnepans - Maggies love power, right? A lot of people caution against using class D amps to drive them and then will turn around and say that a receiver like the Outlaw RR2160 (rated at 110 watts into 8 ohms) drives Maggies really well! I'm not really asking about differences between Class D, A, or AB so much as I am asking about how can you tell the POWER an amp has from the specs? 
redstarwraith

Showing 1 response by orpheus10

orpheus10
8,668 posts
 

I earned a living for my entire adult life as an electronics technician. I have a "First Class" radio telephone operators license. Most people today don't even know what that is, but once upon a time it meant something. I go back to a time when we used "slide rules". I mention all of this for a reason, one of them is the fact that I know formulas up the "ying yang".

For years I had a 150 watt per channel SS amp. Presently I have 70 watt tube monoblocks. I can't tell the difference in power. That's because neither of them went to school and don't even know "Ohms law"

Audio pertains to what you hear, while electronics pertains to formulas you work out on paper. I could hear those amps, but I never heard a single solitary formula.

Those amps and my ears told me that it takes 2 watts of SS power to equal 1 watt of tube power. Don't blame them, they never went to school.


More to discover