Your gain may vary.
What actually determines volume power? Is it watts?
I have a Yamaha AS-3200 amp. It sounds beautiful and has a really good open sound. The problem is I like my music loud since I live alone and typically I have the volume 70% and with some recordings it is not high enough. I need a amp that has more power/volume.
The AS-3200 is 200 watts at 8 ohms. I see many amps, even much more expensive ones (like the Yamaha M-5000), are also at around 200 watts per a channel at 8 ohms. I am going by 8 ohms for my speakers and also the worse case scenarios. Does this mean if I had a more expensive class AB amp like the M-5000 I would still be listening at 70% volume and getting the same power/loudness? If not, then what actually determines the volume power if not watts?
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- 51 posts total
Max speaker output is limited by a number of factors, but as a rule of thumb speaker sensitivity +20-23 dB is about the practical limit. So, a KEF LS-50 is about 84dB sensitivity and is capable of peak output put of 104dB at 1M distance which requires a 100W amp. A JBL 4367 with 94dB sensitivity is good for 117dB with 200W driving. A 3dB increase in sound pressure level requires doubling the power, adding more lower is in general and expensive and ineffective way to make your system go louder. You also need to know the room impacts. Add 3 dB for a stereo pair, and subtract 6dB for every doubling of the 1M reference distance. The size of the room, and it's acoustics are obviously key as well, but without specific knowledge of the room dimensions and RT60 it's impossible to calculate their impact, other than to say room gain is a function of acoustical spatial loading, and most domestic rooms behave somewhere between half-space and quarter space loads depending on size, speaker location, and frequency. Above 1000Hz, most speakers behave like half-space loads, below 200-300 hz, quarter-space loads. That's all a function of the wavelength of a given frequency. Very low frequencies can't even be made in most rooms, rather they rely on direct pressuring and depressurizing the room.
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@immatthewj Really depends on zooming in on what the OP is hearing when he feels he's run out of juice. Generally speaking, a current constrained amplifier produces a flat output into an easy load but at difficult loads the frequency response starts to track the speaker's impedance curve somewhat. So with an ESL, an amp will lose output in the treble. Roger Sanders of Sanders Speakers rightfully points out you need an amp with not just current, but high frequency current drive, which his Magtech amps provide. With a speaker with a normally bad bass output like several Focals, the amp will sound soft in the mid-bass, where the speaker dips to or below 3 Ohms. |
- 51 posts total