What is your experience with amp power?


So I wanted to know what my fellow audiophiles feel about power.

I realize that some speakers are current hounds and need a prodigious amount of power or watts (lets say Maggies). But my question is for speakers that do not. Speakers that are easy to drive, or maybe just higher in efficiency and can be driven by a modest tube amp or even an adequate receiver. 

What is you experience with high power, high current amps ? Do your speakers sound better with more power? At low volumes, in a small or medium sized room? Do you think the quality of the music is dependent on higher powered amps?

128x128Ag insider logo xs@2x2psyop

Showing 1 response by muvluv

High efficiency loudspeaker usually have greater dynamic range than less efficient speakers, due to something called ’thermal compression’, which is heating of the voice coil. As the coil heats up, its resistance goes up too. This is far more common with lower efficiency loudspeakers! Most solid state amps will thus put out less power. This can happen with individual bass notes, causing them to compress.

Its often more difficult to find higher power amplifiers that actually sound like music, although that problem is not as big now as it was 20 years ago.

@atmasphere

I use all pro amplifiers crown xls, xti and a Cerwin Vega el-36dp along with a cvx 21-s all of those are professional level which they also put out a lot of power and sound very musical and I mean it they sing also the Cerwin Vegas makes my system sound like a movie theater, club and small concert. My goal is to have a huge concert going on in my head and around me when I’m by myself