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Amplifier Power test


captainbeefheart

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I gleaned over all 7 pages of the other thread doing the same test and only 6 people participated. The highest I saw was 25 watts from someone that likes to crank their tunes. The other 5 people that did the test were all under 4 watts for their LOUDEST volume. Hopefully we can get more data from people but it sounds about right which is why many say all you need is an excellent 5 watt amplifier with high efficient Klipsch speakers. And of course there are always exceptions where someone will need 25+ watts for their needs but I highly doubt anyone will measure anything more than a 50 watt amplifier can provide. And yes for anyone reading that includes headroom, you don't need to complicate math as it already accounts for that since we are using digital sources and maximum being 0db.

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I understand the question. I understand the math. What I don't understand is what part of this test is going to delineate the requirements at various peaks and transients. Sure you can test for a duration at a certain frequency, but what about when the load is shifting in milliseconds? What about power factor? Enter 1000 more variables too. What part of this test is regarded as a real world requirement providing a real world result of a sufficient answer? I'm not afraid of the answers, I'm afraid that if it were so simple, the audiophile community would already have been doing this and discussing it daily. I think what this thread has going for it is how STEM principles can be toyed with in experiments at our own home. So it's a cool thing to play with. Now I'm just going to observe what you guys come up with from my side of the neighboring fence.

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1 hour ago, Westcoastdrums said:

Looks like I ordered the right size tube amp after all 

Screenshot_20220223-190115.jpg

 

If this is really what your using to make a purchase, you had better get your numbers right. The most important, and most contentious, figure in that calculation is the Speaker Sensitivity Rating. Better get that one validated. Drop that number 5 points in your calculation and see what happens to your Required Amplifier Power number.

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10 minutes ago, 314carpenter said:

I understand the question. I understand the math. What I don't understand is what part of this test is going to delineate the requirements at various peaks and transients. Sure you can test for a duration at a certain frequency, but what about when the load is shifting in milliseconds? What about power factor? Enter 1000 more variables too. What part of this test is regarded as a real world requirement providing a real world result of a sufficient answer? I'm not afraid of the answers, I'm afraid that if it were so simple, the audiophile community would already have been doing this and discussing it daily. I think what this thread has going for it is how STEM principles can be toyed with in experiments at our own home. So it's a cool thing to play with. Now I'm just going to observe what you guys come up with from my side of the neighboring fence.

 

It's simple, if you can find an impedance vs frequency plot for your speakers, if say 4 ohms is the lowest you see instead of the nominal 8 it's rated then just do the calculations for the 4 ohm load which would be the lowest the amp will see. Forget peaks and transients because the test accounts for those being the fact that with a digital source no signal can go past 0db, hence the peak amplitude at 0db is what we are calculating.

 

I think your overthinking it because the test is elegant enough to simply cover what we need to know. I do agree it would be prudent to do the calculations for the lowest impedance on the frequency plot for the speakers to know your maximum power the amp needs to deliver. When people post results I'll do the quick calculation which anyone can really do for an 8 ohm load which is just square your voltage reading and I'll also do one for a lowest impedance.

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Just now, 314carpenter said:

 

If this is really what your using to make a purchase, you had better get your numbers right. The most important, and most contentious, figure in that calculation is the Speaker Sensitivity Rating. Better get that one validated. Drop that number 5 points in your calculation and see what happens to your Required Amplifier Power number.

No.  I can get by with 5 watts or less, I'm aware.  I made a purchase solely because captain was kind enough to offer his services to the community.  Decided to buy an amp that would power any speakers now or in the future if you must know.  I'm just participating in the thread is all.  

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11 minutes ago, Westcoastdrums said:

No.  I can get by with 5 watts or less, I'm aware. 

 

Some may compromise knowing that they won't need more than 5 watts for 99% of their listening tastes but there is that 1% of the time you need more power for whatever reason it may so I don't blame people for wanting a worst case scenario power rating.

 

13 minutes ago, Westcoastdrums said:

Decided to buy an amp that would power any speakers now or in the future if you must know.

 

And that's just it. Many people swap speakers like they do underwear and they want an amp that has the capacity to feed hungry speakers and loud listening volumes.

 

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22 minutes ago, Westcoastdrums said:

No.  I can get by with 5 watts or less, I'm aware.  I made a purchase solely because captain was kind enough to offer his services to the community.  Decided to buy an amp that would power any speakers now or in the future if you must know.  I'm just participating in the thread is all.  

Sounds defensive. Didn't think my post implied offensive connotations. It was about the math. Relax. Where's my participation trophy?

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9 minutes ago, 314carpenter said:

Sounds defensive. Didn't think my post implied offensive connotations. It was about the math. Relax. Where's my participation trophy?

Sounds defensive?  Don't know how... You think someone buys an amplifier based on a calculator on crowns website for hifI?   Hahahahaaha.  I can do math as well, relax. 

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While I applaud the effort required in putting this together I didn’t do this test.  But I can tell you that the wattage meters on my McIntosh MA6600 integrated rarely go past 5 watts and have never gone past 20 watts.  At such volumes the music is dangerously and recklessly loud.  My CW3s are 12’ away from my listening chair.

 

As an aside, take heed of Dave Grohls cautionary tale.  The legendary Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman has recently revealed that his hearing loss - from loud music - has, for many years, been so bad that he must lip read whenever there is more than one voice speaking in a room. So keep that in mind when contemplating amplifier wattage requirements 

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On 2/21/2022 at 11:05 AM, captainbeefheart said:

all you need is a volt meter that can read 20v scale AC voltage, you can try it with a 200v scale but the results won't be as accurate.

So I tried this with my little old ratshack meter at 200v scale (doesn't have 20v) and it just gave me a bunch of zeros and the backwards nine? 

 

 

ratshackmeter.jpg

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I just tried to replay the audio file again to take a picture of the meter while testing and now it won't play? Says it cannot render the file, I even deleted it and redownloaded it says the same thing each time thing is it was working the first time I tried it now nothing. Well I tried sorry..

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1 hour ago, ODS123 said:

While I applaud the effort required in putting this together I didn’t do this test.  But I can tell you that the wattage meters on my McIntosh MA6600 integrated rarely go past 5 watts and have never gone past 20 watts.  At such volumes the music is dangerously and recklessly loud.  My CW3s are 12’ away from my listening chair.

 

As an aside, take heed of Dave Grohls cautionary tale.  The legendary Nirvana drummer and Foo Fighters frontman has recently revealed that his hearing loss - from loud music - has, for many years, been so bad that he must lip read whenever there is more than one voice speaking in a room. So keep that in mind when contemplating amplifier wattage requirements 

Curious what is the damping on those meters? I had a Mac 2105 back in the day, it got stolen long ago (bastards). The meters were S-L-O-W.

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53 minutes ago, babadono said:

Here I thought you were in the "I keep it under 75 dB" club:)

During my little test today normal listening levels were around 67-68db-- for my max listening test mid 80's was getting too loud for more than half a song or so man I must be getting old! I'm sure if I tried the test again Friday night after a few cold ones results would be quite different but then I'd probably have to find a new place to live..

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1 hour ago, jjptkd said:

So I tried this with my little old ratshack meter at 200v scale (doesn't have 20v) and it just gave me a bunch of zeros and the backwards nine? 

 

The level you are listening to must be too small for the meter to read it with the 200v scale. Make sure you have the red probe in the voltage/resistance socket and not the current socket, the picture of your meter has that section out of view so I can't see if you have in the correct spot. Maybe try reading your mains power from a receptacle to make sure it works and you can read 120vac.

 

2v on a 200v scale usually looks like .02v but depends on the meter, it's most likely like I said that what you are measuring is too small for the 200v scale to read it properly as most 200v scale meters will not read millivolts so it needs to be at least a few volts ac to get a reading.

 

My friends that ask for a cheap meter I usually tell them to get the one linked below because it's easily found at most lowes or Homedepots etc.. and it's relatively inexpensive for what you get. Makes hobbies a lot more fun when you have a decent meter and for a novice the autorange feature makes life so much easier.

 

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Klein-Tools-600V-Auto-Ranging-Digital-Multimeter-MM400/206517333

 

 

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8 minutes ago, seti said:

There is a similar thread at DIY audio with years of data already accumilated.

https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/a-test-how-much-voltage-power-do-your-speakers-need.204857/

After I did this test I started building flea amps of a couple watts.

 

 

Yes exactly I copied Pano's test from there. The results from there show most people really don't need a lot of power but I figured since this is a Klipsch forum and one great thing about most of Klipsch's speaker line especially the Heritage models is their amazing efficiency so I would love to see a lot of people participate here and see the data for a group of mainly high efficient speaker users. Ultimately it would be great if enough people participated and we got enough data that we could sticky the thread. That way there anyone interested in Klipsch speakers can see real world power levels for specific speakers. It would help a lot of people take the guess work out of purchasing speakers and amps and what their power requirements are. I can update the thread with a spreadsheet showing users test results for each speaker used, they can quickly see the number of tests done and the results divided into each speaker model.  So say you own a 300b SET amplifier good for 8 watts and your looking to get new speakers, click on the sticky thread pull up the latest spreadsheet and look through the speaker models to get an idea of what power people use with them on average and maximum levels.

 

 

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