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What do you look for in damping factor?

It's been decades since I was up to speed on damping factor, so I'm interested in knowing what all of you look for. And—if you're so inclined—why. I may be in the market for a new amp sometime soon, and I'm no longer sure how much weight to give to this spec. THANKS.
-Bob

P.S. Speakers I use are Maggie 2.6/R, Spendor SP3/1P, NHT SuperTwos and PSB Stratus Minis (hey, I like them all, to one degree or another!).
hesson11

Showing 2 responses by shadorne

shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
anything close to a 100 is good, above this you are unlikely to gain significant audible improvements (diminishing returns)
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
Negative feedback is not normally a problem unless the device is unstable or is over driven (bad design, misuse). Excessive damping factors may be indicative of a design that is not balanced with regard to other factors, such as stability, distortion at clipping etc.

Extremely low damping factors will cause frequency response to vary with speaker impedance.

Audio is represented by a voltage signal. In order to preserve this you should have low ouput impedance compared to the speaker input impedance, which equates to a high damping factor (at least greater than a nominal value of 10 in order to be inaudible when matched with a load that varies significantly with frequency,such as most speakers).
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