Watts! How many do we need?


Got a new amp. Accuphase P-4600. It’s great. I love it. 
150 watts into 8 ohms, 300 watts into 4 ohms and it has meters so I can see wattage. Have them set on freeze so I can see the highest wattage during the session.

My Harbeth speakers are not very efficient. Around 86db. Their impedance is an even 6 ohms dipping no lower than 5.8 ohms. 

Playing HiRes dynamic classical recordings  ( Tchaikovsky , Mahler) at room filling volumes I have yet to exceed 1watt.. 

Amps today offer a lot of watts some going to 600 even 1200 watts. Even if you have inefficient speakers with an impedance that dips down to 2 ohms do we need all this wattage or should we be focusing on current instead? 

jfrmusic

Showing 1 response by mswale

Most of the time, I'm using 1-2w listing to the radio. If I want to rock out, or make the house vibrate I use around 50-60w this is out of a 200w amp. At 100db (system can do well over 100db without clipping) at 60w, there will be 100+w peaks.

Since it takes double the power to produce 3db gain, it's good to have all the power, and use it when you want it. Generally a 200w amp will sound better at 50w, then a 50w amp at 50w. Plus staying that far under the amp's peak power produces much cleaner power to the speakers. 

Most of the time, we will all be happy with a 20w amp, but I would never buy anything under 100w