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Recent Posts
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Another of the Greats! Thanks for contributing good music to my life! RIP Mr Betts -
...Like our society, economy & our country. LGB
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By Woofers and Tweeters · Posted
I knew I read that, but was in a hurry earlier so I didn't have time to locate it. Thanks -
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Eight watts is not much power , it’s a level of power that will leave many systems prone to clipping, especially at any appreciable distance. Certain music and special effects can be enhanced to an exhilarating level of pleasure and intensity when played loud . We may not want to listen at the higher levels for long , but sometimes shear unclipped power is the secret recipe for delivering a moving and memorable experience . All things being equal ,power is a good thing ,as is the high efficiency that our speakers deliver . -
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Am I to infer the twice the rated power handling comes into play at high volumes when demanding everything from the speaker/amp? So would it be safe at lower volumes to use a lower powered amp?
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The benefit is called "headroom". Any piece of music will vary in amplitude. Those intermittent, briefly louder instances are called "peaks", and require more power from the amplifier. So if your amp is playing at level "X" one of those peaks will come along and demand more of the amp's power to reproduce the louder signal. If the amp maxes out trying to faithfully reproduce that brief peak it will "clip", which means if you looked at the waveform on an oscilloscope it would look like an undulating wave but the tops and the bottoms of the wave will be flat. These flat portions indicate the amp is operating beyond its limits, which can damage the amp. If an amp has headroom, it has more power than is needed to reproduce those peaks. Some people consider headroom the ability to briefly generate considerably more power than its continuous output rating. Fair enough. Whether your amp has plenty of reserve power to drive your speakers or merely has the headroom to briefly reproduce those peaks the result is the same. Conversely, most speakers are rated in "Continuous" watts. Which means they can tolerate some peaks beyond that continuous rating as long as the amp has enough headroom to reproduce the wave faithfully. If the amp clips even if its output rating is below the continuous wattage rating of your speakers, when the amp generates that flat section described above, it is sending a DC voltage to your speakers. This is bad and if long enough in time can damage your speakers. The solution is to keep the volume down to a point where you don't hear distortion, even on those intermittent peaks. As long as you don't, you're not pushing your amp or speakers beyond their limits and risking damage to one or both.
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