Are a minimum # of watts (100+) needed to get really good sound at low volumes?

[admin_exported]

Hi folks,

In purchasing a high-end integrated, do I need to ensure that it has a minimum # of watts, assuming my speakers are fairly sensitive (89db, 6 ohms impedence) even if I listen at fairly low volumes? I've heard that there are sounds that momentarily require high(er) wattage to hear especially at low volumes. Is this true?

Thanks.

 

[nads]

i would be more concerned about getting an amp that works with the speakers. Or getting some speakers that will work in the environment you want to use them in.
so what are the speakers?

 

[Anonymous]

speakers with those specifications should not be hard to drive. i would not think that you would need 100w, although it certainly will not do any harm

 

[Anonymous]

Hi

Easy to answer. Simple analogy would suffice.

First a general answer followed by an answer to your specific question.

Consider # of wattage as capacity or number of horse powers a motor car engine can generate.

You only need so much horse power to get you from A to B if that's all you're after. A single piston OHV air cooled 500 cc engine would do just as good a job as a V12 DOHC twin turbo engine if all you want is getting transported from one point to another.

Same with audio. If you just want to hear something through a pair of speakers, you don't even need a watt of output power, period. No ifs and buts.

There are obvious reasons for the motor industry to have bigger and more sophisticated engines. It's all about greater acceleration, torque, smoothness of the cruise etc, etc. It's the EXPERIENCE.

Same with music. The same music can be played on your mobile phone as a ringtone or by a full orchestra or band. Ringtones don't require 100's of watts and that's the experience you get. If you want the real experience close to that of listening to the real thing, you'll want more wattage because it's about dynamics, transients, energy etc. (which you don't get on a mobile phone or iPod BTW)

The caveat is that wattage will not be the greatest and sole determining factor, just like the engine is not the only factor in a car that will decide its performance. You'll also want to look at some other specs as well, sound to noise ratio, distortion etc.

Because everyone has a budget and everything is made within a budget, the aim will be to find or get the right balance among these factors, at the end of the day for the best performance possible within a given budget.

Now to your specific question of

"there are sounds that momentarily require high(er) wattage to hear especially at low volumes"

Testing amplifiers at low volumes is a good way to evaluate it's capability of maintaining a certain amount of dynamic range through its practical volume range. Specification analogy to a motor engine would be torque. With small engines you can't get acceleration at low revs. Bigger engines just respond better. It's easier to measure at low volumes or revs.

I hope that What Hi Fi would give better explanation on their product reviews so that everyone can understand how a verdict have been reached.

All they say is " This product is good because we say so, or bad because we say so, don't question just trust us" A little more detail would help. With the amount of information that's written, one can argue that anyone can write a similar review without even auditioning the actual product.

 

[Alec]

Highly relevant and insightful closing paragraph there. Ahem. Anyway, does that mean that more watts can equal better performance even at low volumes...?

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="susanoo"]
Hi

Easy to answer. Simple analogy would suffice.

First a general answer followed by an answer to your specific question.

Consider # of wattage as capacity or number of horse powers a motor car engine can generate.

You only need so much horse power to get you from A to B if that's all you're after. A single piston OHV air cooled 500 cc engine would do just as good a job as a V12 DOHC twin turbo engine if all you want is getting transported from one point to another.

Same with audio. If you just want to hear something through a pair of speakers, you don't even need a watt of output power, period. No ifs and buts.

There are obvious reasons for the motor industry to have bigger and more sophisticated engines. It's all about greater acceleration, torque, smoothness of the cruise etc, etc. It's the EXPERIENCE.

Same with music. The same music can be played on your mobile phone as a ringtone or by a full orchestra or band. Ringtones don't require 100's of watts and that's the experience you get. If you want the real experience close to that of listening to the real thing, you'll want more wattage because it's about dynamics, transients, energy etc. (which you don't get on a mobile phone or iPod BTW)

The caveat is that wattage will not be the greatest and sole determining factor, just like the engine is not the only factor in a car that will decide its performance. You'll also want to look at some other specs as well, sound to noise ratio, distortion etc.

Because everyone has a budget and everything is made within a budget, the aim will be to find or get the right balance among these factors, at the end of the day for the best performance possible within a given budget.

Now to your specific question of

"there are sounds that momentarily require high(er) wattage to hear especially at low volumes"

Testing amplifiers at low volumes is a good way to evaluate it's capability of maintaining a certain amount of dynamic range through its practical volume range. Specification analogy to a motor engine would be torque. With small engines you can't get acceleration at low revs. Bigger engines just respond better. It's easier to measure at low volumes or revs.

I hope that What Hi Fi would give better explanation on their product reviews so that everyone can understand how a verdict have been reached.

All they say is " This product is good because we say so, or bad because we say so, don't question just trust us" A little more detail would help. With the amount of information that's written, one can argue that anyone can write a similar review without even auditioning the actual product.

[/quote]

true.But a good 60watt amp could ,and should be able to, drive speakers with the spec mentioned quite easily and give a sound that just as dynamic as you would get from a good 100watt amp driving same speakers. its only when the speaker load gets tricky that the 100watt amp will come into its own, which is not going to be the case with the mentioned speakers.

 

[nads]

[quote user="al7478"]Highly relevant and insightful closing paragraph there. Ahem. Anyway, does that mean that more watts can equal better performance even at low volumes...?[/quote]

I would say that yes it can give more control.
But i am still interested in what speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="al7478"]Highly relevant and insightful closing paragraph there. Ahem. Anyway, does that mean that more watts can equal better performance even at low volumes...?[/quote]

Here's what I think..

Yes, higher wattage helps at lower volumes.

But higher wattage drives up the price of the amplifier, so by adding extra watts (and keeping the price the same) to give you more dynamics you might be making unwanted sacrifices to other areas of your sound.. as the other guy mentioned, signal to noise ratio (SnR) and total harmonic distortion (THD).

The sweet spot? that depends on way too much to be able to give a good figure, but your speakers will have a recommended amplifier power to be used with them. I would suggest aiming for the upper end if you are particularly interested in the dynamics of it, what might be a problem for you though is setting your volume - you don't want to end up with the situation where your comfortable listening zone (out of ten) is somewhere between 1 and 1.0001. (I'll admit a slight exhaggeration there to make the point)

Right, the more complicated question... sadly deems a more complicated answer

Yes low volumes can have sudden moments of higher power requirements, if you think about the audio signal, time vs amplitude, it is moments of higher slew rate that require more power. Easiest way to think of it is this, perhaps. Take a perfect square wave at 100% amplitude, using the full range of the speaker. When you go from -100% to +100% your speaker cone has to, technically, move at infinite speed. this is impossible. The amplifier has to accelerate that speaker cone really really fast, this requires power. Its this kind of power requirement that is referred to as the 'peak output power' which is often also quoted with speakers.

Another thing relevant. make that square wave almost perfect. So it is basically a clipped sine wave of massive amplitude (lets say 10x the amplitude of the left over imperfect square wave). The power dropped across the speaker when reproducing this square wave is the same as the power required to produce the 10x as loud sine wave. Bye Bye crossover. So in essence, you are more likely to kill your speakers with an amplifier driven outside its power range than you are using an amplifier with too much power for the speakers at too higher volume.

It goes against what you would think, because you'd think that throwing the bass cone out way too far will damage the mechanics of the speaker. Yes it will, but as it gets further and further out, beyond its rated distance the response of the voice coil becomes non-linear. So you double the input and you no longer double the displacement of the speaker cone. It will, however, sound awfully distorted and it will be clear you are overdriving the speakers. overdriving the amplifier could be mistaken for overdriving the speakers too though and in reality it is more likely to cause damage.

Hope that answered your question. I never know how far I can go into technical terms when people ask things like that though so if you don't understand anything I'd be happy to clarify... or if you're up on that kind of thing I can keep the response a lot more brief in future

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="nads"][quote user="al7478"]Highly relevant and insightful closing paragraph there. Ahem. Anyway, does that mean that more watts can equal better performance even at low volumes...?[/quote]

I would say that yes it can give more control.
But i am still interested in what speakers.[/quote]

Yes indeedy, probably a more important factor than the amplifier itself. Doesn't matter what you have on tap if you dont have a pair of speakers willing to draw that power when it needs it.

 

[Andrew Everard]

[quote user="susanoo"]
I hope that What Hi Fi would give better explanation on their product reviews so that everyone can understand how a verdict have been reached.

All they say is " This product is good because we say so, or bad because we say so, don't question just trust us" A little more detail would help. With the amount of information that's written, one can argue that anyone can write a similar review without even auditioning the actual product.

[/quote]

Another

?

 

[Alec]

sorry hendrixj for another interruption. thanks for the answers folks, tho its gone over my head abit. i guess id have to experiment with other amps to really see the diference with a more poweful one.

 

[Thaiman]

The more power, the better sound will be imo....There are 50 watts amps out there that have good current drive but very few! (I can use my amp as welding machine

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks to everyone. My speakers are the Acoustic Zen Adagios.

 

[Thaiman]

[quote user="hendrixj"]
Thanks to everyone. My speakers are the Acoustic Zen Adagios.
[/quote]

Wow nice looking pair and can be driven with lowish watts Valve amp.

 

[Anonymous]

Very good analogy Susanoo. Here my two cents.

As far as I recall about 100W were needed to be able to reproduce the dynamic range between pianissimo (lowest sound) and fortissimo (max sound) (not sure the italian words are used in the UK but guess you catch the idea).

 

[Anonymous]

[quote user="Thaiman"]The more power, the better sound will be imo....There are 50 watts amps out there that have good current drive but very few! (I can use my amp as welding machine [/quote]

I can't disagree more. Despite what many of us Americans say, more is not always better and bigger is not always better. I think over a certain amount you tend to lose detail. I am a strong believer in technique over power. It works in sports as well as hi-fi.

 

[Thaiman]

[quote user="The Computer Audiophile"]I can't disagree more. [/quote]

No problem

In my experienced, which properbly not as good as your, I found the high power amp (good ones) will out preform a good low power amp unless you are using a speacialist's speakers such as living voice. and that is the main point here....a high power output amp will leave you a freedom to choose whatever pair of speakers you might fancy and let face it speakers are the most difficult thing to get right.

I heard Sugden power amp next to my GamuT and while the low watts Sudgen sweet and produced such a beautiful soundstage....when I turn GamuT up there was no contest! The Dennish beat the brit in every area.

 

[Anonymous]

My Wharfedale evo2 30s have a sensativity of 89db at 6ohms. I power them with 70watts/channel and I have no problem what so ever!

I think about 40watts is the miniumum I would advise but they would cope fine with about 30 watts like on a NAD 3020 or the like.

I have a loudness button on my amp also, which I never turn off!

 

[Thaiman]

It hard to explain into text! Great dynamic swing from a big current drive amp is totally addictive.