I have noticed that with my McIntosh MC7200 amp (non autoformer) and ADS 1590/2 speakers, 2 watts on the meters will almost burst my eardrums. No technical observance here, just noticed this bit of info when listening to all kinds of music in my room.
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?