kryten
Established Member
I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with these 'target' figures for sound output.
Anyone who listens regularly to music at anything over 90dB is going to have _serious_ ear problems within a fairly short space of time. 100dB+ is complete insanity!
I spent years continually improving my car stereo - always striving for sound quality as opposed to the boy racer 'max power' approach. When I finished, I had well over 6 grands worth of kit and an amp that delivered 2x150w into the main speakers plus 300w into the subwoofer and could easily hit 118dB+ (somewhat helped by the cabin gain of the car).
I regularly listened at volumes far higher than sensible and now have significant hearing loss (-18dB at 6kHz), tinitus and great difficulty understanding people when there are several conversations going on - none of this is fixable
Dolby reference level is far too loud for me now.
Aside from this, different amplifiers clip at different points in their range and this is often power supply based. As long as the amp can drive the speakers with around 100w of _clean_ power then that is usually enough at most listening levels.
You need 10x as much power for you to perceive the sound as being twice as loud (10dB) so to get something twice as loud as your 100w amp, you need to go to 1kW!
The only other thing I'd say is that power amplifiers are truly the one piece of equipment where the numbers mean absolutely nothing. Take a random sample of 5 amplifiers (lets say a cheapo own make one from dixons, a rotel, an arcam, a chord and a krell reference) - now, give someone the specifications alone and ask them to decide which will sound best - bet they don't even get close!
The only thing that's worth doing for poweramp choice is deciding a budget and then going and listening to the amps that are in your budget!
Anyone who listens regularly to music at anything over 90dB is going to have _serious_ ear problems within a fairly short space of time. 100dB+ is complete insanity!
I spent years continually improving my car stereo - always striving for sound quality as opposed to the boy racer 'max power' approach. When I finished, I had well over 6 grands worth of kit and an amp that delivered 2x150w into the main speakers plus 300w into the subwoofer and could easily hit 118dB+ (somewhat helped by the cabin gain of the car).
I regularly listened at volumes far higher than sensible and now have significant hearing loss (-18dB at 6kHz), tinitus and great difficulty understanding people when there are several conversations going on - none of this is fixable
Dolby reference level is far too loud for me now.
Aside from this, different amplifiers clip at different points in their range and this is often power supply based. As long as the amp can drive the speakers with around 100w of _clean_ power then that is usually enough at most listening levels.
You need 10x as much power for you to perceive the sound as being twice as loud (10dB) so to get something twice as loud as your 100w amp, you need to go to 1kW!
The only other thing I'd say is that power amplifiers are truly the one piece of equipment where the numbers mean absolutely nothing. Take a random sample of 5 amplifiers (lets say a cheapo own make one from dixons, a rotel, an arcam, a chord and a krell reference) - now, give someone the specifications alone and ask them to decide which will sound best - bet they don't even get close!
The only thing that's worth doing for poweramp choice is deciding a budget and then going and listening to the amps that are in your budget!