How much power do I need?

McKinley

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Okay so I'm going to buy a new amp in the next few weeks. However, I'm uncertain of how much power I need - and to a degree therefore how much money I need to spend.

I'm going to be using a sub/sat system like the Canton QX150, which can be driven up to 100w each. My room is a 13'x14' lounge so space is relatively limited - no big speakers here. Also I'm not going to move house anytime soon, so no need to future proof.

My current Pioneer 5.1 amp is only rated at 150w (therefore max 30 per channel) and goes plenty loud enough. So I would assume a Sony DG820 at 230w total (45w per channel) would be ample for the Cantons.

Can someone please offer any advice - do I need more power, or is that only required for big speakers? The other amp I was looking at was the Yamaha 763 or Sony 2400 but they've loads of power and it struck me (possibly) as overkill?
 
You shouldn't really take too much notice of manufacturers power ratings, as most of them are tosh.
One of the tricks is to rate the amp with just 2 speakers running, which means with all 5 power can be halved sometimes.

That said, it's nearly always better to have more power available as you have better response when it's needed. I suppose it's similar to a car engine.

I'd suggest a 100Wish rated amp is about what you should be looking for and no, it won't be overkill, IMO.
 
So when you say 100W rated I take it you mean 100W per channel?

i.e. for my 5.1 setup: 5x100W = 500W rated power input on the amp? Which would discount the Yamaha 763, Onkyo 606 and so on?
 
The Canton Move 150 QX's quoted 120W power rating is "Music power handling" (Movie 150 QX - Movie Series - CANTON pure Music (en)). If you throw even a fraction of 100W of "real power" at them, you will destroy the speakers faster than you can blink.

The Yamaha 763 or Onkyo 606 will be fine as far as power is concerned with these speakers, even though they too exaggerate the power figures by creating quoting.
 
Is it correct to say that the way to determine the real (or close to real) power output of an amp is to divide the power rating stated on the rear of the unit by the number of speakers? e.g a 230W amp would deliver 45W to 5 speakers?

Any idea of what the 'real' rating of the Cantons is?
 
Is it correct to say that the way to determine the real (or close to real) power output of an amp is to divide the power rating stated on the rear of the unit by the number of speakers? e.g a 230W amp would deliver 45W to 5 speakers?

Any idea of what the 'real' rating of the Cantons is?

It's not that simple, although power in can give a good idea of what's going on.

You can get massive amounts of power for very short periods, if you go big enough with the Caps. It's just another misleading part of things.

Suffice to say that any mainstream 100W per channel amp will be fine :smashin:
 

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