I kept listening and waiting for the "magic" word... And it came: Headroom. That's the bottom line. A low powered amp, say 100W driving 100W speakers will often clip when played decently loud. More often than we think, at transients - which is something every good recording has. And transients, will reproduce more faithfully when the amp can deliver more power. It's pretty safe to send 200W or even 400W peaks for msecs to a speaker. And the music will sound better. It will "open up".

@dan-qe1tb

2 ай бұрын

I think you had left three things out: 1. the size of the speakers. 2. how many watts are actually being delivered by the amp, at a normal level of volume playing normal music. 3. the ability of the power supply to deliver reserve current. There's not a direct relationship between the rated RMS power of an amp, and its ability to provide current for transients, because the power supply could be over engineered or under engineered at any given amplifier power rating. None of the amps I've had, have clipped. Two out of four were rated at 100 watts RMS. The only time I had heard distortion with any of the amps I've had, was when I had played the smallest speakers I've had loud, in a large room: Totem Rainmakers. The distortion wasn't the amp clipping, it was with the small 5.5 inch woofers in those speakers and their inability to handle a high level of power at high volumes, and not the amp. Cheap 100 watt amps may clip because their power supplies have compromises and can't deliver enough current for transients. I don't happen to own one. I've never bought a new power amp, but I don't buy anything that didn't have an original MSRP of at least $1500. Pass amps tend to be rated at 25 watts RMS. It's because Nelson disagrees with how the marketing people have the general public think, "more power is better". He likes to show visitors, what the actual power draw is on a meter, when playing a song.

@zaldam

2 ай бұрын

100W a low powered amp? 😮

@arize84

Ай бұрын

Same reaction I had. I actually think a true 100 watt amp is a high power amp.

I witnessed a speaker catch on fire firsthand and, yes, the owner was trying to demonstrate how loud they could play. Mission accomplished.

@bradleydurbin6784

Ай бұрын

They were Mission Speakers? lol

More speakers are damaged by under powered amps. Not over powered. When you crank up the volume a lower powered amp will go into "clipping" where it reaches it's maximum output and then go into a really high distortion at high frequencies. It is all that extra energy in the distortion that fries tweeters. Yes it is possible to have so much power you fry a woofer voice coil. But that is extremely rare.

Very funny ending keep up the good work PAUL and crew!

This is such a hard concept to explain. There's only underpowered amps breaking speakers because they clip, distort and fry your tweeter before you know it. Overpowered amps don't exist (other than maybe for your electricity bill). The worst you can do with an overpowered amp is play so loud you get a little audible distortion. Like you would get on your laptop or phone, or maybe in your car or on a cheap portable radio. And then you just turn it down and all is well.

@paulstubbs7678

2 ай бұрын

That's such a well used one, but it kind of falls into Paul's description of being an idiot and playing it that loud. Every thing has a limit, if you exceed it often trouble ensues - unless your an electric guitarist.

@rollingtroll

2 ай бұрын

@@paulstubbs7678 honestly my amplifier is 70wpc and I found out my speakers can handle 200. I still don’t care, I don’t play that loud and the amp’s power supply keeps them in check very well :)

@ocelotxp

Ай бұрын

It's not hard to explain. People just don't understand the dynamic in play. Speakers pull power from the amp, amps don't push power. It's the same reason you can use a 40 watt bulb in a lamp rated up to 100 watts.

@Hyxtryx

Ай бұрын

@@ocelotxp It is not the same as your bulb example. In your bulb example, the bulb dictates how much current/power is drawn, yes. With a speaker, the speaker does not dictate how much power is drawn, at least not to the degree you imply. If you play a song that has loud and soft passages, the loud passages deliver more power to your speakers than the low ones. How does the speaker know how much power to draw? It doesn't! The amp output voltage is going up and down, which pushes more or less current to the speaker. This is the opposite of what happens with an AC outlet and lamp, or a battery connected to a lightbulb.

@bk3720

Ай бұрын

Ac voltage goes up and down on a lightbulb at a fixed frequency when plugged in to a lamp. The speaker and the incandescent light bulb are both wire resistors. Amplifiers and wall outlets both put out a/c electricity. My point is the electrical principal is the same in each scenario. The amount of current flowing through is dependent on available voltage and the resistance that allows the current to flow. Electrical laws do not differentiate, its the same in electronics as it is in industrial applications. Pushing and drawing current are describing the same thing in different terms. Electrons flow from negative to positive, provided they have a path to go. The only difference is the amp can put out many a/c electric frequencies and voltage levels whether it’s a 60 cycle a/c bass wave or a conglomeration of a/c waves that some like to call music. Lol

I think low wattage amps can even be more likely to cause damage through clipping if they are pushed too much.

@ocelotxp

Ай бұрын

Correct. This is it, exactly. People think the amp is pushing watts to the speaker-- this is backwards. The speaker is pulling power from the amp.

@Hyxtryx

Ай бұрын

@@ocelotxp No. The amp is pushing power to the speaker. This is not like a device plugged into your wall outlet, where the device is pulling power.

@VintageGearMan

29 күн бұрын

Massively agree! It is in fact true.

@VintageGearMan

29 күн бұрын

Better to be over powered and sensible about volume levels. Headroom is key for any speaker as long as you are not over the top in the first place. If you are, game over something is going to get destroyed. There is a reason for years speaker manufacturers have rated a watt peak max. At that point it can handle that max peak for a second or two if you are lucky and not clipping by under a under powered amp of any kind. Enough said.

@VintageGearMan

29 күн бұрын

A reputable wired parallel dual watt meter is handy but a good one is not cheap.

There are two types of speaker damage. Mechanical/suspension and electrical/ voice coil. For the former, use your ears. If you can't tell when a speaker is unhappy mechanically then you should have your audiophile license revoked. The latter is about heat dissipation. That takes grunt power like clipping. This is why an under rated amp can be even more dangerous to a speaker than an over rated one.

@VintageGearMan

29 күн бұрын

Yes!

Great explanation, thank you Paul!

Paul great analogy and another great explanation..Thank you

An experienced repair technician explained to me that a low powered amplifier going into clipping was essentially sending DC voltage into the voice coil. This, he said, results in turning the voice coil into a toaster element. When done repeatedly, the thin wire in the voice coil will overheat and probably break open. Paying for an amplifier section with adequate power is going to be cheaper than repairing or replacing speakers in the long run.

The only time I ever fried a tweeter was when overdriving a 15 wpc amp. That was in 1977

@cpufrost

Ай бұрын

Before ferrofluid, most domes and cones could only handle about 10-15W RMS before letting out the smelly smoke. ;-)

From the point of speakers, each driver have mechanical limitations (Xlim and for distortion Xmax), and thermal limits (approximately the RMS Watt marked on each driver, assuming it's clean AC = music). You are unlikely to hit the thermal limit (with a clean signal), unless it's a really small box for a subwoofer, you might in some odd random case be able to put so much energy (Watt) in to move it while being bellow the mechanical limits that it gets too hot. What the speaker do want is a clean signal, so an amplifier that's comfortable with the work/load will sound better and it won't clip. It's too much to write here, but like Paul said it gets really loud awfully soon (at least if the speakers have high sensitivity). Decibel and how sensitivity ("X"dB/1W), the energy/watt that's required to increase a certain amount of dB at your listening position takes a bit of reading and math to figure out. But most people don't listen very loud, I believe it's around 85dB where you have to start raising your voice in a conversation, so assuming you relatively close to the speakers and they have a decent sensitivity then you might not use more than 1 Watt (RMS). (Hence the saying that the quality of the first Watt from the amplifier is what matters the most).

Excellent explination Paul!

The simple reason is that it's a pull, not a push. The amp doesn't push watts on a speaker, the speaker pulls. If the speaker supports 100w, it will only pull up to 100w. You'll only damage the speaker if you don't provide sufficient power at loud volumes. It's for the same reason you can use a 40 watt lightbulb and not have it explode in your lamp, even if the lamp will support in excess of 40 watts.

One thing to note is speaker sensitivity. Sensitivity tells you how much volume you'll get from a speaker with a given amount of power. The higher the sensitivity rating of a speaker, the louder it will play with a certain amount of wattage. For example, some speakers have a sensitivity of around 81 dB or so. This means with one watt of power, they'll deliver just a moderate listening level. Want 84 dB? You'll need two watts - this is due to the fact that every additional 3 dB of volume requires double the power. Want to hit some nice and loud 102 dB peaks in your home theater system? You'll need 128 watts.

@coyoteproject999

Ай бұрын

that's why Klipsch speakers are good with 95 or more, 100dB sensitivity. My rf7, with between 1 to 10watts are amazing. never need more 100W

In some cases, an amplifier with more power can be safer. As you play very loud (perhaps during some party) hitting the amplifiers maximum output voltage, the output will start clipping. A hard clipping of any signal yields harmonic distortion and that distortion gets to your tweeters, which often can’t handle much power. Thus a smaller amplifier playing loud might end up frying your tweeters more easily than a bigger amplifier with more headroom to avoid clipping.

@Fastvoice

2 ай бұрын

Correct. I had such an experience more than 40 years ago with my small PA system where the amp had only about half the power than the speakers could handle (a money issue). After nearly every gig I had to change the little festoon lamps that protected the tweeters because they were melted.

@rw80

2 ай бұрын

And you probably never set an big amp to the maximum volume, so it’s always a lot below clipping levels. [edit] I,should’ve listened to,Paul first, he says exactly the same

@West3rror

Ай бұрын

Exactly👍 Haven't blown a tweeter for many years after having more power

@alejandrorigonatto694

Ай бұрын

By avoiding clipping you also reduce temperature dissipation in the woofer coil, which is also a good thing...

@geoffccrow2333

Ай бұрын

Yes or blowing the amp transisters etc

I've got a pair of Dunlavy SC-V with a pair of M700 amps; it's way more power than I'll ever need, but sounds really good!

Speaker damage from amplification is nearly always the result of "user error"

@einarbk885

2 ай бұрын

no, you cant blow a speaker with too little power. its easy to blow a speaker with too much power.

@West3rror

Ай бұрын

And too small amps

@West3rror

Ай бұрын

​​@@einarbk885Yes, you can. Clipping is what deestroys speakers. Small amps clip easier. Blown a few tweeters with small amps. Never with a big one rated alot more watts than the speakers.

@einarbk885

Ай бұрын

@@West3rror its an audiophile myth. google "elliot sound products, why do tweeters blow when amplifiers distort" the data is there. which is in line with the PA market.

More is better but quality is more important and system matching. Most of the time you are using only a few watts and they can be cheep or expensive. If your speakers are 96db sensitive then I doubt you will ever use more than 5 watts. So 20x more power for headroon is more than you will ever need. When choosing an amp , normally if you compare an100w amp against a 1200w amp for the same price the 100w will sound better.

A poorly designed (or defective) high powered amplifier can blow speakers with transients when you power them (or the pre-amplifier) on or off. That's much less likely to happen with a low power amp. I had a 200 w/channel amp that would start up with a loud "whuump". Since I rarely play anything above 10 watts, I replaced it with a better quality 100 w/channel amp (lower THD, higher slew rate) that actually sounds very slightly better in an A/B comparison at normal listening levels, even though it has a factor of two less headroom. It can still play louder than I can tolerate without audible clipping.

If my speaker JBL 4320 turns out 96dB at 1 watt / 1 metre, I will need only 4 watts per channel to get 102 dB with maybe 1 dB of headroom. In fact I’m running external active cross-over between my preamp and my four stereo power amps. Dynamics and frequency response improved hugely when I started running this four-way active system a few years ago. It is always speaker drivers that distort well before the system hits 120 dB loudness at which point I really have to turn it down even when I’m listening to Mahler’s or Tchaikovsky’s 1812!

Hi Paul. Whenever a customer asks me about wattage in speakers, I usually compare it to horsepower in tires. You can still drive a 1000 hp car on just about any tires. Wattage on speakers is not a necessary data, since it won't say anything about sound quality.

I run bookshelf speakers (recommended power 50-100 watts) with 250 watts/8 ohms (800 watts/ 2 ohm dynamic power) amp. Nothing will happen, as long as i wont turn amp to max volume

@RanTausi

2 ай бұрын

I have my GFA 555 MK2 which is 200W at 8 ohm connected to bookshelves speakers and all is good as long I am controlling the volume 😉

@Error2username

2 ай бұрын

If nothing happening before max there is something wrong with your amp😂 its supose to come in slowley when turning the volum control😂

Thanks for answering my question Paul - I kind of get it now 😊

@edwardgiovannelli5191

Ай бұрын

The more power you send to your speakers (watts) the more the coils heat up. Heat is the enemy. A 10,000 watt amp played at moderate levels puts out the same wattage as a small 10 watt amp at the same levels, its just that the 10k amp *could* go much higher (higher, in fact, than any normal person would ever want to drive it) The big draw (no pun intended) to a high watt amp, is that is has the power 'in reserve' to handle sudden transients more accurately than a small amp

I built some 5" FR driver plus woofer speakers and I took them to a hifi shop for evaluation. They have nearly the whole signal fed into the FR drivers and they are completely open, out of the box (and the woofer is in the box). The hifi dudes LOVED the speakers and they said the only speakers they had that sounded better were their most expensive ones. And of course they would have done a power handling test (like when I heard them do that once before, on those speakers). Both times they said nothing about any power handling problem. And the $9 FR drivers are rated at 6 watts. 😅

I believe the saying goes "90% of listening is done within the first 10 watts" Speakers, for the most part, can withstand peaks above their rating, provided it is done with good, clean power. Clipping beyond max power is what really gets the barbecues going. Stay away from the edge of your power cliff, and you will never have a problem. Plus pushing that kind of power is uncomfortable to be around.

@edwardgiovannelli5191

Ай бұрын

For the most part, its a speaker's heat dissipation that matters most. Overheat the coil, melt the varnish, and the coil shorts... no more speaker. Yeah, absolutely, a momentary spike of power will not cause a lot of heat, so the coils will absorb it and move on. Clipping, harmonics and all that nonsense can cause a lot of heat, and that's where we run into trouble.

@West3rror

Ай бұрын

Speakers usually have Nominal/Continous rating and a peak rating. Clipping happens when the amp is out of power. That is what kills tweeters. Never blown a tweeter with an amp bigger than the speaker is said to handle. Only with small weak amps.

Usually it's an amp without enough power that blows tweeters when driven into clipping. But I have had one experience where a pair of B&W bookshelves used as an over/under center were destroyed by a 2KW monoblock. Their sensitivity was so much lower than the towers at the corners that at full tilt with a music track that drove the centers hard I couldn't hear the breakup. Tweeters were fine but the woofer voice coils were melted. I put a meter on the replacements and also tested it with 1KW peaks. I stopped there figuring I'd tried hard enough to break it without success.

Another question (probably already answered in some other video) is: is it a safe way to use your ears to determine when the speakers start to sound distorted?

Try setting the volume control to where the sound pleases you the most. This will confuse your friends and they will surely consider you to be a master of all things hi-fi.

Depends on the speakers sensitivity. 1 watt can theoretically play 120 db and that's to much for most living rooms

I’ll never understand why the ‘explainer’ videos on this topic don’t ’explain’ that it is the load which draws current from the power source, not the power source which pushes the power to the load. In the case of amp & speaker, the speaker draws the power from the amp, and as with any motor, everything is fine as long as the motor is moving. When the amp is taxed to the point of clipping, the power output of the amp (at full current) approaches DC, the speaker’s ‘motor’ stops moving and voice coil damage results. The speaker is toast. If this condition continues (current draw surging upward past maximum through the by-now fused voice coil) and output relays fail to drop the load (the speakers), the amplifier is toast, you can tell by the by-now escaping smoke. Bottom line: It is good to have at least as much power available at the amp as the speaker can draw, and a little more doesn’t hurt. A separate question is how does that extra power at the amp sound? Many find the lower powered tube amps, for instance, EL34 tube amps, sound better than KT120 amps; then matching speaker power requirements to the amp’s ability to deliver power requires tighter tolerances and closer monitoring.

That was good sir.

So many of Paul's questions could be answered if folks took a basic electricity 101 class. I appreciate him going through the effort though.

I have a boom box with more than enough power for my 20x20 garage. Do you think I need two woodstoves?

Hi Paul, I've got a simple question, does a DAC need to have tone controls or just a volume knob or non at all? Please educate me on this one, thanks.

@kc9scott

Ай бұрын

not a simple question

Remember above 79db use hearing protection. Hearing loss is accumulative.

@stpd1957

2 ай бұрын

Excellent advice.

@genesmith4019

2 ай бұрын

What?

@dan-qe1tb

2 ай бұрын

OSHA says hearing protection is recommended when the noise is over 85 db, all day long. Your numbers are conservative. You had left out the time factor. Hearing damage may not occur at 100 db, if the exposure if short. I've had many salespeople, play songs to me during demos, at over 90 db. Those songs were all no longer than five minutes.

@glenncurry3041

Ай бұрын

79dbSPL. The SPL is the important part. Otherwise "db" is just a ratio between two measurements. Not a measurement itself. Interestingly making the roughly 70db SN of a record about the same as the 90db SN of a CD in actual listening.

@paulehney4581

Ай бұрын

Huh?

maybe one way to look at this is: watts per second, one a amp is clipping is not pushing more watt but more continues watts if that makes sense. and a speaker wattage rating is sometimes a rms rating, or music power. not continuous same amplitude output. either way, you use too many watts when you destroy something. you can not have to many watts, unless you let your kids play around with it.....

KZread is stalking me. I called your tech support (I’ll call back Monday when you’re open) and I get a notification of this video five minutes later.

I've kn own this intuitively for quite a while, but it's good to actually know why.

My opinion is I'd rather have the extra amount of power than not enough. Paul said it correct about headroom.

I know that when I had my Polk monitor 5 loudspeaker hooked up to my Adcom amp at 60 watts per channel it would begin to shutdown. But now they are hooked up to a Yamaha 35 watt per channel receiver and they play really loudly when I play my vinyl and no problems with clipping at all. Which is strange because the Adcom is more powerful than the Yamaha. So I would say yes it’s possible to damage a loudspeaker with more power. It’s probably a matter of synergy also. The Polks are rated at 8 ohms at 20 to 120 watts.

yes for some ppl the answer must be as direct as this one .

I think it is the fact that the gain is the same that causes the most confusion. It took a long time for that to sink in with me anyways. Sitting 7 feet from efficient speakers at 80dB I don't have a lot to worry about. Not a lot of clipping even on modestly powered amps.

This is why live sound amps have thousands of watts of power. Live music has much more dynamic range than most recordings. A 1kW amp will sound much better with a wide range program than a 100W amp will using the same speakers. And too, the speaker will NOT be damaged when those large peaks are played. (And the music sounds so much better too!) OTOH, a 100W amp would clip and produce excessive power to the HF drivers which aren't designed to handle it (thermally) causing them to either be damaged or fried completely!

But does the question remain, for a given speaker, what would be the recommend highest power amp you could use for best sounding results. Obviously sound quality and specs is a factor..but for a given speaker better bigger amps can improve sound.. but what might be the limit. Are there examples of specific models of speakers where various low, med and high power amps have been used, compared and documented?

That's why there is this thing called a volume control. BTW, it's very easy to trash speakers with a amplifier with low power when you clip it and put DC into the voice coil.

I think of it as if the amp wasn't restricted by the volume control then yes it would probably damage speakers but it is controlled by the volume control.

I think if you only plan on playing your home system for your own listening (and a couple friends) at no more than 80-85 dB overall, and leaving say +10 dB or so more for brief, peak passages, 95 dB won't blow quality speakers when using a good quality amp of at least 50 rms or more. If you try and run your home system for a big party in a big room, then you need far more SPL to fill the room especially as more bodies absorb sound. Then a commercial amp and commercial speakers would be better suited.

A Ford at 50mph is just as fast as a ferrari at 50. One ultimately can go faster and be a more enjoyable ride. At highway speeds do the job

I hooked-up my McIntosh MC-450 amp to my old JBL L-100a's (50 watts.) Thank goodness for the Mac Power Guard, lol!

Paul...your points of "us never going to ...." is moot b/c as soon as you say it, it will become the next tictac video challenge... Or, back in my day, a normal weekend at the frat house. 😁

Amps like not being pushed hard. Use 500w for 100w speakers and you are only pushing it 20%. I heard you get better sound when the amp barely has to do any heavy lifting at that 20% range. IDK how true that is though. I would imagine it would be good for longevity.

I have 650 Watt monoblocks, I have never felt they have too much power.

You have to define quality of the watts. Distortion from lower quality power can hurt the speaker and hurt your hearing more than anything almost.

I'm using a 200w per channel into 8 ohm amp with 70 watt 8 ohm speakers. But I never play my music loud. Like you say you know not to do anything silly with your gear. Maybe I would have done as a young teenager though lol.

If I understand correctly, higher wattage amps give us more headroom which is good. But we most assuredly won’t use that headroom, which is….pointless?

@giannismag3064

2 ай бұрын

Having more headroom means that the amplifier works in the more linear and distortion free region. An amplifier with no headroom at all, can distort the signal because it can work in its limits to produce the same amount of power. An 150w amplifier is designed to handle much greater heat and current than an 60w amp. If you want to feed 50w into your speakers, the 150w amp will do it effortlessly, without overheating and without distortion. The 60 watt amp will almost hit its limits.

@edd2771

2 ай бұрын

@@giannismag3064 ok, but 1200 watts for a 100 watt speaker as in his example? Is there any audible benefit to “excess” power of 12x vs (say) “only” 2x?

@giannismag3064

2 ай бұрын

@@edd2771 I guess his example is a bit overkill, but the 1200W amp will probably be more linear than an 200W amp, feeding 100W. In theory it will sound better, but in the end, everything comes down to personal preference.

@albanana683

2 ай бұрын

​@@edd2771The power imbalance, of itself, will not cause any sound degredation. Comparing two competent amps will be down to the sonic signature of the amp, not the power output. Some amp manufacturers will have two different devices with the same topology, but different power figures. You should hear no difference when using them with most speakers. If you have speakers that present a difficult load then more power will give you more control.

@edd2771

2 ай бұрын

@@albanana683 that all makes sense, but you seem to be saying there is no benefit or downside to wattage in excess what a speaker is rated for. You seem to be saying there is no benefit to “headroom”. This seems to be the opposite of Paul’s position and it’s the reason I asked the question. Based on what you say, a 1,200 watt amp is always a waste of money. As one as one likes the sonic signature and the amp has the minimally sufficient power, that should be all one needs or would want. No?

miss 2nd half of question 4 ohms into 8 ohms?

Theres a whole niche of YT videos where folks enjoy attempting to make a woofer catch literal fire.

Its worse if you have less strenght in your amp, it will loose control of your speakers and it can blow your speaker.

Speaker wattage ratings are mostly marketing. Quality modern speakers (last 30 years?) will handle 1000 watts short term (very) without damage. There is no way to measure speaker power handling except to measure excursion (in and out movement) and even that depends on the cabinet. Crossovers limit the frequencies so that only matters on bass. If you underpower a bass speaker and play it too loud, it sounds bad and creates heat in the voice coil melting it. If you overpower a bass speaker, you move the electro magnet voice coil in and out farther than it physically can which damages the speaker, but it isn't "blown". Both of these types of abuses sound bad when it happens. Speakers are damaged by you not having enough power to play it as loud as you are trying to play it. Use your sensitivity rating on your speakers to figure out how much power you may need to get to a certain decibel lever. Hint... if you are a metal head, anything 87 db@1watt or lower may not work for you unless you buy a BIG amp, not a receiver. Wish Paul would have included this information.

A hifi mag tested a big McIntosh amp, with accurate power meters on the front, despite the amp having close to 1,000 watts the absolute maximum he saw on the meters was 60 watts, but that was so loud it was unbearable; I use a 3 watt amp, and it's plenty in a small room if you don't want to damage your hearing. If I had 1,000 watt amp, it would cause lots of problems to be solved, and I'd just be listening to the noise floor of the amp.

Clean power will not damage a decent quality speaker but clipping/distortion will ruin them.

Probably the best analogy is a car. It is best to have a big and powerful engine that, if needed, enables you to drive the car fast and climb the hills effortlessly.

Another analogy would be: "If a car is rated to be driven at 220 mph, is it more dangerous than a car rated to go 110 mph?". The answer, yes driving at 220 mph is more dangerous than driving 110 mph, but both speeds are dangerous. And it's up to the driver to keep the car at safe speeds; the speed capability of the car is not going to make the car more dangerous (by itself).

I have come to prefer and love large amplifiers over small ones. Headroom forever lol! They just seem effortless and I truly enjoy them more so than smaller amplifiers. Just my experience. All this being said I have yet to ruin any speaker with them. Paul has touched this subject many times before and glad he still does now and then for those that question such.

An advantage and reason to get a more powerful amp is that it will often help give better full range sound at lower volumes too

Shroedengers cat?!lol

Had a mono block valve amp (120w) that suggested 15 minutes listening at full volume, I think 120 DB maybe more, can’t remember but I just thought it was funny

There are Far too many people who don't understand that amplifiers don't deliver full power At All Times.

Charlie Watts

An underpowered amp is ore likely to damage a speaker than a higher powered amp because of "clipping".

This gain thing does not sound logical to me. As far as I understand the specifications for an amp provide the maximum output at a given maximum input signal, whereby the input is loosely standardized. So lets say 1V input is a fairly typical standard (could be less or more but not often within the same family of products). That means that the gain will be higher as the maximum power increases. But that is not the point. I think it boils down to as long as you do not allow the driver to distort, you will not damage it. Well, most audiophiles like to think they have a good hearing for that. Here is your chance to prove it. But it gets more complicated than that. When you conciser synergy it can happen that a too powerful amp or one with too much damping factor simply does not sound good for a certain speaker. For instance Lowther speakers have a 100W rating. I do not think they will sound good with PS audio amps. And I am not bashing either of them. They are just as un-synergistic as you can imagine.

480 watts of class A power is good for me. My speakers are 95db @ 1W

@tommyK7282

Ай бұрын

120 watts X 2 @ 8ohm. 240 watts X 2 @ 4ohm . Speakers: American Acoustics DS1212 95db @ 1 watt 20HZ to 20KHZ 275 watts RMS.

@tommyK7282

Ай бұрын

I still have a lot of head room but class A gives you that power nonstop.

I think it far more likely to damage your amp with your speakers!

If you're not an idiot, your ears will tell you there's a problem before you blow a driver.

I play with 25 watts classe A...had many partys no problem

would i be correct in saying distortion is the speaker killer?

@hugobloemers4425

2 ай бұрын

Yes, and that can be because the speaker is distorting due to too much power, or the amp is distorting due to too little power. So as Audiophile you should never have to worry about blowing up a speaker, unless you are drunk or a fake.

In my opinion, no-one should have more than 3 watts in built up suburban areas like mine. If I made the rules I would make it illegal to own a sound system with a lot of power or a lot of bass, that way you can't annoy your neighbors (like MY neighbors FREQUENTLY annoy me with their daily parties and their relentless bass thumping on and on. I don't know why they don't listen to PROPER music, you know, stuff that has an actual TUNE to it but no, they're just satisfied with a simple basic "thump thump thump thump" (maybe it's all their simple primitive minds can cope with)). Higher power is fine as long as you live somewhere far away enough that nobody else will hear it. I don't think I break even 1 watt when I'm listening to my stuff, I respect my neighbors (even though they don't respect ME) and I don't like my stuff too loud. Everyone else though cranks their 1000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 watt subwoofer systems up to 11.

Some people are indeed idiots.

@sudd3660

2 ай бұрын

relax, it is not an audiophile so they do not care, and the natural thing to so is simplify so they do not have to think about it. when they get a taste of hifi they soon get involved.

I have a car that can get to 150 MPH, but does not.

Yupp! No problem with «insane» amounts of watts in an amplifier. The real problem are SS amps with too few watts. Then there is a real problem of blowing up your speakers when the amp can’t deliver the watts needed. - Happily not a problem with tube amps though.

@ThinkingBetter

2 ай бұрын

Right, tube amps usually play nice with soft clipping reducing the harmonic distortion at clipping levels and thus the load on your tweeters. However, transistor amps can include a soft clipping circuit, as NAD introduced first many years ago.

Stay out of clipping and you will be fine.

The time I'm most likely to fry a speaker is when I'm driving it from my laptop. If I forget to turn the amp off before unplugging the TRS plug from the headphone socket, there is a god-awful noise caused from some dodgy switch mode power supply I think. Rare that this would be a problem for most people as you're not disconnecting an unbalanced source normally; but in the case of laptops and perhaps live musicians, it could be a quick trip to carnage for a small speaker / big amp combo.

Hey Paul!

@hugobloemers4425

2 ай бұрын

Fun feature, Google allows me to translate this to English. It does not do anything though apart from then allowing me to see it in the original language which it does not tell me what that was. (I suspect Swedish)

As a general guide the amplifier RMS wattage rating should be half or less that the speaker RMS wattage. Some recommend that the amp wattage should match or be at most twice that of the speaker wattage. It also depends on the type of sound you intend to amplify which is why guitar amplifiers/speakers are designed differently to a HiFi system. In theory you can run any speaker and amplifier combination safely, but you can also run the same set up unsafely. We should also look at the sensitivity of the speakers in dB which is an indicator of how much effort or energy is needed to drive a speaker. It kind of reflects the efficiency of the speaker. A speaker with a sensitivity rating of over 90 would be easy to drive and will need less wattage power from an amp compared to a similarly rated speaker with say 88 bB sensitivity. I built two mono-block Vacuum Tube amplifiers that are rated at 12W per block RMS. The "loudness" of this system is ridiculously high in a home environment. I rarely push the amp blocks beyond 35%.

@mrpeterfromgodknowswhere

2 ай бұрын

That¨s guano advice. Don''t listen.

@PetraKann

2 ай бұрын

@@mrpeterfromgodknowswhere Who the hell is guano?

I had 350w Passlabs X350.5 running a 2way 6.5" and softdome tweetie. Wattage is also not equal, and was not impressed with it for how big and heavy it was..

600th liker!

FIRST! 1 million watts!

To much?= Get bigger speakers😂

thumbs up!