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#1
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How many watts?
One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system
in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations. But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews and this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it can do. Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"? Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more capable of driving speakers than the others? Wylie Williams |
#2
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How many watts?
I did some experiments with a set of B&W DM 604 S3, going from 250W /ch up
to 800W /ch seemed to give an overall improvement in dynamics and bass performance. Other speakers give less notisable improvements. Seems like a good power suppy are one of the important issues, wattage itself seems less important, 100W should cover most speakers. You will need 10 times the power to play twice as loud (as far as I remember) KE "Wylie Williams" wrote in message news:riT1b.179640$cF.60223@rwcrnsc53... One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations. But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews and this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it can do. Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"? Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more capable of driving speakers than the others? Wylie Williams |
#3
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How many watts?
"Wylie Williams" wrote in message
news:riT1b.179640$cF.60223@rwcrnsc53 One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its best performance. Given the known variations in rooms, speakers, and listener expectations, I don't know why that should be. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations. But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency speakers? See former comments. I agree that 100 watts is a *nice* number, but there are no absolute guarantees in real life and this is real life. I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. Listener expectations take many forms, both in terms of loudness and also in terms of satisfaction given the appearance and reputation of the equipment. The remark is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which seems to be a normal figure, but not others. This would be a normal range for medium-efficiency speakers. However speakers with sensitivity as low as 80-83 dB/ 1 w are not unheard of. The difference between a 89 dB speaker and a 83 dB speaker is comparable to the difference between 100 watts and 400 watts. I recounted one personal experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. See former comments about expectations and loudspeaker efficiency. The reviews and this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top performance from ANY speaker. Enough to avoid clipping, whatever that may turn out to be. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it can do. Durability relates to this as well. Many loudspeakers can do great and wonderful things for a short while and/or infrequently. Make a habit out of it and speaker damage follows. Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"? Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more capable of driving speakers than the others? Within the context of the FTC rating scheme, it is possible to have a power amp that puts out 100 wpc at low distortion from just 100 to 10 KHz, and another that puts out 100 wpc at low distortion from 20 Hz to 20 KHz. It seems conceivable that with appropriate speakers and musical source, there would be an audible difference. |
#4
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How many watts?
Wylie Williams wrote:
One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations. But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews and this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it can do. Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"? Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more capable of driving speakers than the others? Wylie Williams Doesn't the answer depend on how loud you want to play your music? Also, listening room sizes differ, so it is hard to give a simple answer. On the other hand, I have heard very few people complain if they have power amps that output 200W/ch cleanly, and it is relatively easy to find those without fans or other unusual cooling requirements. |
#5
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How many watts?
"chung" wrote in message
t... BAF wrote: If you want some really good sites for audio, follow these two url's. www.linkwitzlab.com http://sound.westhost.com/index2.html BAF Thanks for the link to Siegfried Linkwitz's website. On the "Links" page, here's what he said: My motto is "True to the original", which means true to what has been placed on the storage medium be it CD, DAT or whatever. Great words to keep in mind as we pursue this hobby. Well, my motto is to have fun with audio:-) High quality, but not to the extreme. Stay away from the religous stuff and use common sense and read up on issues you don't understand, don't believe in fairy tales and " golden ears ". If you can't hear a difference, that means it is good enough for you. And please, please, understand the importance of acoustics before putting a 10.000$ hifi system in you living room. Have fun! :-) BAF |
#6
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How many watts?
"BAF" wrote
.. And please, please, understand the importance of acoustics before putting a 10.000$ hifi system in you living room. Now you tell me. My room is ordinary and untreated and sounds fine for conversation. I do have a $10,000 system (retail prices) not counting cables and wires (this is RAGE, you know) or alternate components not currently in use. Yet I keep hoping for more enjoyable realism when I listen. While I have just decided to start playing with room treatments I am a skeptic about how much improvement they can make. I'll do it mainly because I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have free toys. But these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll see how the home experiment works out.. My skepticism about room treatments is based on a peculiar line of reasoning. Here it is: I think if I were to remove the stereo from any home listening rooms and have a group of musicians stand and play in that location I would have a result that was far superior to a CD of those musicians played over the stereo that was removed. I can't resist saying that I am sure it would sound just like they were there in the room. But maybe if I moved the musicians a couple more feet into the room..... I may patch my room acoustics, but I think the real problem is the shortcomings of the stereo systems. Or the CDs? Damn this hobby! Wylie Williams |
#7
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How many watts?
Wylie Williams wrote:
"BAF" wrote . And please, please, understand the importance of acoustics before putting a 10.000$ hifi system in you living room. Now you tell me. My room is ordinary and untreated and sounds fine for conversation. I do have a $10,000 system (retail prices) not counting cables and wires (this is RAGE, you know) or alternate components not currently in use. Yet I keep hoping for more enjoyable realism when I listen. While I have just decided to start playing with room treatments I am a skeptic about how much improvement they can make. They are likely to make more difference than changing out a CD player, or amp, or cables. The audibility of treating first reflections, for example is fully supported by acoustic theory. I'll do it mainly because I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have free toys. But these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll see how the home experiment works out.. Or maybe they're the wrong treatments. What are they? My skepticism about room treatments is based on a peculiar line of reasoning. Here it is: I think if I were to remove the stereo from any home listening rooms and have a group of musicians stand and play in that location I would have a result that was far superior to a CD of those musicians played over the stereo that was removed. Not necessarily. I can't resist saying that I am sure it would sound just like they were there in the room. But it might sound awful. -- -S. |
#8
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How many watts?
...
Wylie Williams wrote: .. I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have free toys. But these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll see how the home experiment works out.. "Steven Sullivan" wrote Or maybe they're the wrong treatments. What are they? I have all sorts to work with, but the room is not very friendly to treatments. From ASC I have 3 Cube Towers and 5 Sound Panels. From Auralex I have 4 Venus bass Traps, 4 2'x2'x24" Cornerfills, 12 T-Fusors, and a few square feet of 2" absorbent foam. I also have some sisal wallcovering that is surprisingly absorbnt - it even comes with specs! So the problem is not that I lack materials, it more that I lack the will to do anythng too drastic the appearance of my living room. That first reflection off the wall to the right is a lost cause: My right speaker is 3 feet from that wall. Coming toward me from the wall is 1 foot of wall, then a window, one foot of wall interrupted by with a step out of 8", then a fireplace, followed by another foot of wall with a step back, another window, and a foot of wall to the corner. I can't imagine anything to on that wall. The wall behind me is 6 feet of glass, a 6 foot opening, and 6 more feet of glass. I don't want to treat that wall either. The other 2 walls are more normal, the one on the left has an 8 foot opening into a dining room, and the speaker wall has only one opening, a 4 foot doorway on the left 3 feet from the corner. Not much room to play. The wall behind the speakers is available, and the wall to the left has a 5 ft section available for treatment, but it's 9 feet away from the left speaker, so I don't hold out hope that treating that wall will help much. My equipment cabinet is a low one - 5' wide and 2 ' high, between the speakers. I just moved it out from the wall a foot and put some absorbent behind it raching up to about a foot above the top of the speakers. - the 4 Cornerfills are a base for the Venus Bass Traps. It seems a bit more musical this way but not a drastic change. . I am using a tower speaker, with 2 woofers low and MTM above. It's good, but I am considering dragging up a pair of Apogee Centaurs from basement storage. They sounded amazingly holographic when I was in the exact right spot, but were a bit fatiguing. I have wondered if some diffusion and absorbtion behind them would make them more pleasant. I especially wonder if the an array of the T-Fusors would let the imaging be more accessible around the room. Wylie Williams |
#9
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How many watts?
Wylie Williams wrote:
.. Wylie Williams wrote: . I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have free toys. But these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll see how the home experiment works out.. "Steven Sullivan" wrote Or maybe they're the wrong treatments. What are they? I have all sorts to work with, but the room is not very friendly to treatments. From ASC I have 3 Cube Towers and 5 Sound Panels. From Auralex I have 4 Venus bass Traps, 4 2'x2'x24" Cornerfills, 12 T-Fusors, and a few square feet of 2" absorbent foam. I also have some sisal wallcovering that is surprisingly absorbnt - it even comes with specs! So the problem is not that I lack materials, it more that I lack the will to do anythng too drastic the appearance of my living room. That first reflection off the wall to the right is a lost cause: My right speaker is 3 feet from that wall. Coming toward me from the wall is 1 foot of wall, then a window, one foot of wall interrupted by with a step out of 8", then a fireplace, followed by another foot of wall with a step back, another window, and a foot of wall to the corner. I can't imagine anything to on that wall. etc reasons why Wylie does not want to actually treat his room Well, then, I'd say that the problem is not the room , or the treatments, or the validity of room treatment per se, but simply your unwillingness to actually treat the room according to some basic principles. -- -S. |
#11
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How many watts?
"Wylie Williams" wrote in message
news:%%W2b.271699$Ho3.36036@sccrnsc03... .. Wylie Williams wrote: . I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have free toys. But these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll see how the home experiment works out.. "Steven Sullivan" wrote Or maybe they're the wrong treatments. What are they? I have all sorts to work with, but the room is not very friendly to treatments. From ASC I have 3 Cube Towers and 5 Sound Panels. From Auralex I have 4 Venus bass Traps, 4 2'x2'x24" Cornerfills, 12 T-Fusors, and a few square feet of 2" absorbent foam. I also have some sisal wallcovering that is surprisingly absorbnt - it even comes with specs! So the problem is not that I lack materials, it more that I lack the will to do anythng too drastic the appearance of my living room. That first reflection off the wall to the right is a lost cause: My right speaker is 3 feet from that wall. Coming toward me from the wall is 1 foot of wall, then a window, one foot of wall interrupted by with a step out of 8", then a fireplace, followed by another foot of wall with a step back, another window, and a foot of wall to the corner. I can't imagine anything to on that wall. The wall behind me is 6 feet of glass, a 6 foot opening, and 6 more feet of glass. I don't want to treat that wall either. The other 2 walls are more normal, the one on the left has an 8 foot opening into a dining room, and the speaker wall has only one opening, a 4 foot doorway on the left 3 feet from the corner. Not much room to play. The wall behind the speakers is available, and the wall to the left has a 5 ft section available for treatment, but it's 9 feet away from the left speaker, so I don't hold out hope that treating that wall will help much. My equipment cabinet is a low one - 5' wide and 2 ' high, between the speakers. I just moved it out from the wall a foot and put some absorbent behind it raching up to about a foot above the top of the speakers. - the 4 Cornerfills are a base for the Venus Bass Traps. It seems a bit more musical this way but not a drastic change. . I am using a tower speaker, with 2 woofers low and MTM above. It's good, but I am considering dragging up a pair of Apogee Centaurs from basement storage. They sounded amazingly holographic when I was in the exact right spot, but were a bit fatiguing. I have wondered if some diffusion and absorbtion behind them would make them more pleasant. I especially wonder if the an array of the T-Fusors would let the imaging be more accessible around the room. Wylie Williams Wylie, drapes on the windows (to include the one just to the right of your right speaker) should cut a lot of early reflection from the right side. Perhaps you already have this, though. |
#12
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How many watts?
i think that power is not so important - if you want to have good
quality of sound on "ALL medium efficiency speakers" you should buy (or make yourself) high quality amp. better buy 50W amp high end than 100W that fit all kind of speakers... if you want to use speakers at home 50W is enough, and notice that more power produce more disortions, and is not necessery at home. greets Wylie Williams wrote: One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations. But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews and this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it can do. Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"? Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more capable of driving speakers than the others? Wylie Williams |
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