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Are vintage watts the same as modern watts

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This thread reminds me of one of my guitar amp customers. He has 3 vintage amps that are the same model, same manufacturer, same year of production. They all sound different to him. He's often asked me why I can't make them all sound the same, even thought I service them all and set them up the same way.
The only answer I can give him is "it's complicated". Then I try and tell him the number of combinations and permutations of individual components involved across the 3 amps. His eyes glaze over and I tell him the important thing is that he can tell what amp does what and use the one that will fit the bill for his gig.
 
If the power rating is Peak or not into a known impedance load which is common, and not 20-20,000 Hertz at 1 percent or less Total Harmonic Distortion, it is suspect. SR era equipment is not to be trusted on power ratings. Pre 1980 Marantz power ratings back to the first Marantz amplifier ever made, are 100% honest. Verified by McIntosh Clinic test procedures and test equipment, by David O'Brien, the only company he regarded fully equal to McIntosh in that era.
 
tourmax said:
Yup. A watt is a watt is a watt.

Where things go off the rails is when the marketing dept gets a hold of the specs and scans it for the biggest number they can slap on the outside of the box.

I find the car audio field is the worst offender. You pick up a subwoofer and it may say "1200 watts!" or "1500 watts!" in big numbers on the box. Then you read down the small print on the side and find that's a "peak" number and the RMS watts are only 500 or 600....I find the practice of doing that "deceptive" at best, "greasy" at worst. But it's not false advertising, so they get around the laws with a little "creative" marketing....
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System 1 has an honest 20 WPC rating. Which is from the company's Japanese period, and still honest with integrity. SR is from the Cost-Cut era, and suspect.
 
hopeless said:
Actually, no, not in this situation. If you understand the differences between the FTC testing regimen and actual speaker demands, you get a far more accurate view of the world. When I did stand up trainings I would often as "what's faster, an Indy car or an F150?" Of course, everyone jumped on the Indy car bandwagon. I would follow with "off road". Game changed.
The answer to the OP's question is that the old Marantz amplifiers were designed to address real world speaker loads, the new product is designed to look good on the FTC power tests. Part of the downfall of the industry.
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Beautiful analogy!
 
It's like the old horsepower wars. They used to rate an engine in the lab, with nothing attached. Now they rate them on a dyno. Wheels to the ground.

They used to rate watts at 1khz. An immediate impulse blast. Now they do RMS full frequency, all day long. Watts are watts. It's just a question of how you measure them.
 
Artie said:
It's like the old horsepower wars. They used to rate an engine in the lab, with nothing attached. Now they rate them on a dyno. Wheels to the ground.

They used to rate watts at 1khz. An immediate impulse blast. Now they do RMS full frequency, all day long. Watts are watts. It's just a question of how you measure them.
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Not now. Amplifier power ratings now are as dishonest (save for High End Audio) as they were in the pre FTC (Federal Trade Commission/Institute Of High Fidelity) RMS standard era. If it's not rated 20-20,000 Hertz, under 1% THD, into a commonly used impedance load used by loudspeakers, 4-8 ohms or under, suspect.
 
BilboBaggins said:
I remember in the mid to late 70s noticing that you generally could not go past about 11 o'clock. Anything after that started distorting.
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thats a product of excessive gain. That seemed to be a "thing" for a while, make things super loud when the volume was just barely cracked. I suspect it was done to confuse power with gain. "Look how loud it is at only 9:00! Must be powerful!", when in reality it might be basically flat-out at that position on the control and anything beyond that just makes it clip harder.

I think all of my receivers are this way, tube and solid state. At least half of the volume control travel is not useful.
 
arcorob said:
I hear what you are saying ..but please understand, I am not a noob. I am trying to point out there is a distinct difference in OOMPF on my 6 vintage amp (all rated at 30wpc or less) than the supposed 80wpc modern amp. So what I amy be finding is the Marantz SR4023 may just have inflated numbers. I'll report back when I do the swap and compare :)
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Nothing wrong with experimenting. Try the two receivers with the other pair of speakers to kind of make it a fair comparison.
Synergy can play a part as well. Size of room as well. Use the same music source if possible.
My buying days are pretty much done and I am sometimes easily confused. The various ways of measuring (or deciding which measurements to publicize) can make modern day buying confusing. Multiple watts ratings (some of which are quite limited such as at a single frequency ) and is it stereo or AV.
Things were much simpler back in the day. Published wpc meant something as opposed to todays mish mash of published wpc.
 
ConradH said:
Didn't Stereo Review or one of the mags have some kind of power cube measurement to better show what an amp would do with real speakers?
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Don't know about the US mags, but over here Audio has/had (*) definitely adopted that "Leistungswürfel" (power cube) measurement & diagram (which afaik originally came from HK - see for example there: https://www.hifi-archiv.info/Harman-Kardon/1984-85 Harman-Kardon/08.jpg) to display the output voltage over both several load impedances and phase angles between -60° and +60°, see for example in this review: https://www.ta-hifi.de/wp-content/uploads/audio_06_2015_mp_pa_2000r.pdf. And I think, that their sister mag Stereoplay also had for a while - albeit in a simplified, numbers-only variant, iirc (can't find an example for that at the moment, though).

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini


*) Don't know, whether they still use it.
 
gadget73 said:
thats a product of excessive gain. That seemed to be a "thing" for a while, make things super loud when the volume was just barely cracked. I suspect it was done to confuse power with gain. "Look how loud it is at only 9:00! Must be powerful!", when in reality it might be basically flat-out at that position on the control and anything beyond that just makes it clip harder.

I think all of my receivers are this way, tube and solid state. At least half of the volume control travel is not useful.
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could have been done to keep the loudness contour active for the same reason.

i think most of my stuff(pres included) is the same way. the only time i go past 12 o'clock is playing vinyl unless i'm using a computer's soundcard and i have the pc output cut .
 
reddodge053 said:
I think vintage watts are more expensive
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That is one of the reasons I gave up the old crap hunt and stared buying new for the main system, after living with new for awhile now $ for $ it was a great decision SQ wise :thumbsup:
 
I have a car with a fairly aggressive accelerator pedal. You get most of the power in the first half, with not a huge amount more in the second half. It makes the car seem really powerful because, without realizing it, you're driving deeper into the available power much of the time. Maybe they used a log taper!
 
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