I Can't Understand Speaker Amplification

[Audiovet]

Perhaps one can also consider the proportion of things.

A 3dB difference in loudness is a just noticable difference; noticable, but not worth 'writing home' about. That denotes a doubling/halving in output power. So should it become a consideration, one should not really vascillate between amplifier output powers smaller than factor 2.

A rather rough generalisation, but a room twice as big might easily require a factor three increase in amplifier output power for a similar loudness sensation. Conversely, would you want to pay for a 2 - 3x more powerful amplifier for a rather small difference in perceived loudness?

 

[whoaru99]

But, it's not always about sheer volume/loudness. A larger amp can provide the necessary headroom if you're running hard with the one you have.

I was running 250/ch and stepped up to 700/ch. I don't play the system louder but I do notice that where the previous amp was running out of steam (onset of that flat/lifeless quality) it's now still lively and dynamic.

I don't notice the "big amp even sounds better at low volume" as I sometimes see reported, but pump up the jams and the difference reveals itself.

 

[musichal]

This.

Room size, preferred volume, the sensitivity and impedance of the speakers will determine what amp is suitable to drive the speakers

This doesn't speak to what amplifier will gel with what set of speakers, but I find the amplifier is less important in comparison to room acoustics, source and speaker placement.

Amplification is very simple. There's no need to feel like it's complicated. There is tons of misinformation over the internet about amplification, so I am not too surprised you are confused.

Although it's pretty much been covered, I will just say that for most people, 85dB of volume is plenty. At extended listening sessions at 90dB you are going to start to damage your hearing. In most cases, less is more. Keeping in mind most speakers are at least 85dB/1watt/1metre, you can see you don't need much power to get to a good listening volume. As you can see that the distance is included in that measurement, that is why the size of the room matters.

So, answer those questions and we can help you sort out a good amplifier.

To answer your above question, 50 watts with the Magnepans is plenty. I'd be surprised if you ended up using more than 20 of those 50 watts.

Yep, room size is a more important factor for required power than some realize.

Just don't start thinking that speaker power handling specs correlate with amplifier power specs and you'll be ahead of the learning curve.