Some speakers must work a little harder than others to achieve a specific volume output. Certain speaker designs are more effective than others in projecting sound evenly across open spaces. If your listening room is small or carries audio well, you may not necessarily need a super-powerful amplifier, especially with speakers that are more sensitive to power. Bigger rooms, greater listening distances, or less sensitive speakers demand more power from the source.
The most common measure of power is root mean square , but manufacturers can also provide values for peak power. The former indicates continuous power output over periods of time, while the latter indicates output in short bursts. Speaker specifications can also list nominal power , which is what the speaker can handle over periods of time.
Overpowering a speaker by supplying more watts than it needs can cause distortion or clipping, but damage is unlikely. Some manufacturers inflate specifications by measuring power at a single frequency, say 1 kHz, rather than an entire frequency range, such as 20 Hz to 20 kHz. For the most part, you can't go wrong with having more power at your disposal than not, even if you don't plan on blasting music at concert-like levels in your listening spaces.
Amplifiers with higher power ratings can deliver without being pushed to maximum output limits, which keeps distortion down and audio quality up. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data.
Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. You may well find you can't find that information. That should tell you just how powerful the concept of wattage has become, and how little you can find out about the quality of the equipment. Know this: with any two pieces of equipment at a given price, you are trading watts for quality. Watts either cost money or quality, every time. Obviously, therefore, it's important to know how many watts you need for your room, right?
Go into a store, and you're likely to hear something that's true: more wattage in general often results in better sound. But it would be more correct to say that more wattage of a given quality sounds better in general. There's that pesky quality thing again!
You see, not all wattage is created equal. To see one reason why, let's return to our example of component-sharing. Don't forget to click the image to enlarge it! So is it always bad to share components like transformers?
No, it isn't. But it can be, especially when you consider all the things a good stereo or home theater should be: it should sound good, and be flexible enough to sound good in your next home. Perhaps you think it should be upgradable—I certainly do. Many people want their stereo to work without trouble for twenty years, or not fade, chip, or fall apart.
And these are just a few of the things a good stereo "should" be. Since cost-cutting is everywhere, and your stereo has to be so many things to be a "good stereo," you really never know when some cost-cutting measure is going to jump up and bite you in the buns.
That's why I recommend buying the highest quality gear you can afford, and buy only the power you truly need. I also recommend taking at face value the claim that "high quality" watts from a product such as a Krell, Rotel, Adcom, or Carver amplifier will provide more power than "low-quality" watts from a receiver from a company like Sony, Yamaha, or Onkyo.
So how many watts do you need for your stereo or home theater? Well, unfortunately, it depends. Here are the things that affect your power needs the most:. I am a believer in bass, and powered subwoofers. The other two produce the Dolby 5. Major wattage is needed to make good, clean, low bass. I also like powered subwoofers because they take significant load off of the main speakers and amp, making them far more musical in the mids, low-mids, and highs.
Once you recognize that most gear is overpowered, you'll notice something annoying: it's hard to find a quality component without all those unnecessary watts! The top-of-the-line in a big-box store is always jam-packed with wattage. But why pay for it? And you know you are paying for it. What to do? The thing to do is go upscale—not to the top of the line in the big-box store, but to the bottom of the line at the audiophile store.
Here's why remember to click the image to enlarge :. So dB makes for a good target. So if you have a speaker with an in-room sensitivity of 88 dB at 1 watt, then 2 watts will get you 91 dB, 4 watts will get you 94 dB, and so on. Simply count up from there: 8 watts gets you 97 dB, 16 watts gets you dB, and 32 watts gets you dB.
So what you'll need is an amplifier capable of delivering 32 watts. Of course, no one makes a watt amp, but a or watt receiver or amplifier should do fine. If the amp or receiver you want puts out, say, watts, don't worry about it. Remember, at average listening levels with typical speakers, any amp is putting out only about 1 watt, anyway. Actively scan device characteristics for identification.
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Develop and improve products. List of Partners vendors. Brent Butterworth. Anyway, take the minimum wattage required for the speaker of your choice and make it the starting point for figuring your power budget. If each of your speakers requires 15 watts to drive it, then your receiver must deliver at least 15 watts per channel. Simple, so far. Which brings us to the second factor.
If you live in a barn or a baronial mansion, nothing less than 70 or 80 watts per channel will do, and more may be handy. Next consider the furniture. Suppose the surfaces of your habitat reflect sound rather than absorb it — with smooth plaster walls, just a few rugs scattered on hard floors and no heavy drapes.
As a result, you can cut your power budget by about 30 percent. Things will clear up considerably the second time you read this. Simply this: some kinds of music are more power hungry than others. For example, richly scored orchestral music — symphonies and such — require more power than even the heaviest rock. If the amplifier has to deliver maximum power only in intermittent bursts, it can usually put forth more undistorted watts than its nominal rating, which is measured for continuous output.
If that sort of thing is your musical dish Mahler and Wagner, et al , add an extra 30 percent to your power budget. I hope you — and your pocket calculator — are still with me. When comparing the power ratings of amplifiers and receivers, look out for possible pitfalls. For one thing, the nominal power rating is measured at midrange frequencies, which are far easier to reproduce than either the low bass or the top highs, which is where you really need the power.
Preferably, it should extend over the whole musical sound spectrum from 30 to 20, Hz.
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