Confused about wattage...
- Thread starter mrkmpn
- Start date
roseau river
Active Member
tone controls maxed out ??
ouch ! thats asking for trouble, mine are generally flat or maybe one notch above.
i always have the loudness on , but thats just my personal taste, im curently using an amp thats rated at 75 wpc and i rarely go beyond the eleven oclock position on the volume knob, anywhere beyond that is pretty freekin LOUD...
im currently auditioning speakers that are rated at 60 wpc, 10 oclock on the dial is plenty loud.
ouch ! thats asking for trouble, mine are generally flat or maybe one notch above.
i always have the loudness on , but thats just my personal taste, im curently using an amp thats rated at 75 wpc and i rarely go beyond the eleven oclock position on the volume knob, anywhere beyond that is pretty freekin LOUD...
im currently auditioning speakers that are rated at 60 wpc, 10 oclock on the dial is plenty loud.
JoeESP9
ESL's & tubes since 83
Sorry, it's not as simple as that. That's a recommended range. It's not written in stone. It's perfectly acceptable to use a much more powerful amplifier. You merely have to pay attention to the resulting sound. Several others have posted about using varying amounts of amplifier wattage with different speakers.
Having more power is almost always better.
Learning to hear and paying attention to sounds of strain or distress in the sound and turning down the volume when you hear such is what matters.
tanker 200
Super Member
With the volume knob in a 2:00 position, my speakers would have already blown to smithereens
No I gotta' stay below a 10:00 position.
:thmbsp: In the 35 years I've owned my Sansui I've never gone past the 12:00 position, 8 to 9:00 is just fine.
cubdog
banging through drywall
FWIW, I've never paid one bit of attention to the ratings for any speaker I've ever owned. Neither have I ever thought about how a particular amp and speaker will match up, power wise, aside from whether or not the amp has enough power to drive the speaker. This only comes into play if I'm using a low power chip amp. I have never, to my knowledge, driven a pair of speakers with an amplifier that was clipping. At least I've never done any damage to my speakers.
My point is, most of what is being discussed here are common sense issues. If you are over driving your speakers , and can't realize it, you probably should not invest in expensive gear. Just buy cheap thrift store speakers and blow them and your eardrums out.
cubdog
My point is, most of what is being discussed here are common sense issues. If you are over driving your speakers , and can't realize it, you probably should not invest in expensive gear. Just buy cheap thrift store speakers and blow them and your eardrums out.
cubdog
This paying attention to what your speaks are telling you really is important especially when they are new to you. Voice coils can relax down in their cage,some tweeter's can have glues aging out,wires can be relaxing into the back sides of drivers. (I had a pair of speaks show their problems at low volume only a while back.) One thing too. That loudness button needs understood as potentially being renamed "Damage Button" when used with a lot of speaks and tone controls?
My son absorbed a repair bill due to trying to make a warm speak sound bright with loudness on/highs cranked/volume up.....he doesn't do that any more?
Edit: I'm solidly in the camp of using whatever controls it takes to get what you want, but "learn your way away from" respecting flat and "understand" what sound your equipment was designed for. It's funny how stuff ends up sounding just right "close to flat" while appreciating what that loudness button means for low level listening. "Rocking On" is best done when you know you aren't messing up the stuff that's bringing it to you!
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Don't worry about dissing him... that's why I'm here asking. He's an intelligent guy, but that doesn't mean he knows everything. During the same conversation we were talking about electronics repair, and capacitors, and I mentioned that you can't fully test caps with most cap testers properly without removing them from the board, and he is under the impression that they can be tested with a multi meter on the board... just looking for a break in the circuit, which from what I've read is incorrect. I don't remember the details now, but I remember that will only tell you if the cap has failed in a particular way, but that test can pass and you can still have a faulty cap.
As stated many times, but mostly overlooked, volume knob position is not a reliable measurement of volume or wattage levels. It really depends on the voltage of you input device and the impedance to frequency relation of you speakers. Depending on the type of music you listen to and the impedance drop at certain frequencies. You could realistically send you amplifier into clipping even before the half way mark on you volume knob. Clipping will overheat your drivers and send them to an early grave. You you like to crank your music, I suggest looking more at the sensitivity of the speakers and the impedance. A 4 ohm speaker will draw twice the current and an 8 ohm speaker at the same setting on the volume dial. Also, a speaker with the sensitivity of 91db will be twice as loud as a speaker with a sensitivity of 88db generally speaking.
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Kingshead
Professor
You are absolutely right.
Kingshead
Professor
It's funny how people read something and arbitrarily skip over some words, apparently they have favorites. As stated clearly about volume knob position, 2:00 is rule of thumb to leave headroom for the amp, this has absolutely nothing to do with wattage output or speaker power handling. Do you kids just sit at home looking at a computer screen waiting for the opportunity to totally misread posts on purpose. Solely for the purpose to troll and stir things up? Get a life.
The knob position thing is news to me. I'd always assumed (obviously) that the volume would be spread evenly throughout the range of the knob. That's one thing I like about this forum is that I'll ask a question about something, find out there's more to it than I thought, and learn new things I didn't know there was to learn.
As far as knob position, the highest I've ever turned the amp up to is about 1:00. I just recently turned up the tone controls because when I had them all flat, it just didn't sound good, the music sounded "thin" unless I was right up by the speakers... by the time I got to my couch it just wasn't right.
I don't hear any distortion of the sound, other than the obvious distortion effects on instruments in songs, so I'm not sure where snarky comments like "go buy some cheap speakers and blow them" are coming from.
bowtie427ss
Lunatic Member
My post was for the benefit of those who don't know better and come here to seek useful information that will help them avoid unnecessary damage to their gear.
Please feel free to ignore my posts in the future.
In fact, i would consider it a personal favor if you added me to your "ignore" list.
Kingshead
Professor
The problem with turning the volume that high, then boosting all the tone controls is you have more than likely exhausted all of the amps headroom (reserve power), this leaves nothing in reserve for dynamic parts of the music. The amp will have no other choice than clip the signal. This is what I was referring to about the 2:00 maximum position rule of thumb. With the tone controls set to flat the 2:00 position still leaves enough amplifier power in reserve for dynamics.
For you trolls, this in no way implies any speaker can handle any amplifier if the 2:00 position isn't exceeded.
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Kingshead
Professor
You are absolutely right. But at the 2:00 position with the tone controls set to flat you have not exceeded the headroom of the amplifier on which the volume knob is mounted, and this is the only amplifier it was designed for. Obviously this is the only amplifier that could be referenced, the one the engineer designed it to control.
You seem like a smart enough guy to buy decent equipment, surely you're smart enough to understand this simple concept.
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Adda
Super Member
My Perreaux E2 has no volume control, but, the preamp is was designed for (the Perreaux EP2) does of cause, but it outputs as much as 8.2v, so that doesn't change the situation at all (the Aragon 18k outputs up to 8v).
What we are trying to say is, you can't generalize these things, each system is different, the volume control doesn't say anything about anything.
Well unless you know it of course, testing will help you find out how high you can turn it before you get in trouble.
But how high you can turn it before that happens, depends on the system, not the position of the volume control.
Kingshead
Professor
I thought you were smart enough to understand your pre amp is also an amplifier. My point still remains, the amplifier your volume knob is mounted on is the pre amp, is this not an amplifier? And I stated "rule of thumb" which is a generalization in and of itself is it not? So rule of thumb, your pre amp will have plenty of headroom if not turned past the 2:00 position if and when you use it with a less sensitive power amp. Glad I was able to point this out to you, hope you are able to use the information in the future.
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Adda
Super Member
But there is no rule of thumb when it comes to volume control positions, it all depends on the system.
You want to be right so bad that you are not reading what we are saying.
What if someone made a preamp and decided to put a volume control in it, that even at max, provided so much headroom, that the preamp wasn't stressed at all?
Makes a lot of sense to make it that way, the preamp couldn't take damage from excessive volume, or EQ'ing, and have low distortion levels, no clipping no matter what you do, as long as proper source equipment is used.
Wow. That's a bit harsh. I'm perfectly happy to be corrected when I write something that is incorrect, in fact I expect it, in the way that bowtie and joe have done. That's best for everyone. But I believe that this is a bit over the top.
James