One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system
in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its
best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp
in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations.
But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation
of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency
speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the
speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much
better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark
is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which
seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal
experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on
Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass
response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews and
this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top
performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it
can do.

Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"?
Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more
capable of driving speakers than the others?

Wylie Williams

I did some experiments with a set of B&W DM 604 S3, going from 250W /ch up
to 800W /ch seemed to give an overall improvement in dynamics and bass
performance.

Other speakers give less notisable improvements.

Seems like a good power suppy are one of the important issues, wattage
itself seems less important, 100W should cover most speakers. You will need
10 times the power to play twice as loud (as far as I remember)

KE

"Wylie Williams" wrote in message
news:riT1b.179640$cF.60223@rwcrnsc53...
One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system
in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its
best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp
in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations.
But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal
recommendation
of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency
speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the
speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much
better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark
is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range,
which
seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal
experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on
Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass
response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews
and
this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top
performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it
can do.

Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose
watts"?
Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more
capable of driving speakers than the others?

Wylie Williams

"Wylie Williams" wrote in message
news:riT1b.179640$cF.60223@rwcrnsc53

One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a
system in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to
extract its best performance.

Given the known variations in rooms, speakers, and listener expectations, I
don't know why that should be.

I asked for help finding out how to
identify such an amp in the thread "Competent Design", and received
many good recommendations. But one issue remains unclear to me: Is
the almost universal recommendation of 100 watts per channel; really
enough power for ALL medium efficiency speakers?

See former comments.

I agree that 100 watts is a *nice* number, but there are no absolute
guarantees in real life and this is real life.

I ask this because I
have read often in speaker reviews that the speaker under review
sounded good with moderate power, but performed much better with
higher power amp, with no particular reason given.

Listener expectations take many forms, both in terms of loudness and also in
terms of satisfaction given the appearance and reputation of the equipment.

The remark is made
about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which
seems to be a normal figure, but not others.

This would be a normal range for medium-efficiency speakers. However
speakers with sensitivity as low as 80-83 dB/ 1 w are not unheard of. The
difference between a 89 dB speaker and a 83 dB speaker is comparable to the
difference between 100 watts and 400 watts.

I recounted one
personal experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500
amplifiers on Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter
more powerful bass response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that
showroom.

See former comments about expectations and loudspeaker efficiency.

The reviews and this one experience make me wonder how
many watts are needed to assure top performance from ANY speaker.

Enough to avoid clipping, whatever that may turn out to be.

Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it can do.

Durability relates to this as well. Many loudspeakers can do great and
wonderful things for a short while and/or infrequently. Make a habit out of
it and speaker damage follows.

Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose
watts"? Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc
effectively more capable of driving speakers than the others?

Within the context of the FTC rating scheme, it is possible to have a power
amp that puts out 100 wpc at low distortion from just 100 to 10 KHz, and
another that puts out 100 wpc at low distortion from 20 Hz to 20 KHz. It
seems conceivable that with appropriate speakers and musical source, there
would be an audible difference.

Wylie Williams wrote:
One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system
in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its
best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp
in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations.
But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation
of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency
speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the
speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much
better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark
is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which
seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal
experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on
Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass
response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews and
this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top
performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it
can do.

Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"?
Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more
capable of driving speakers than the others?

Wylie Williams


Doesn't the answer depend on how loud you want to play your music? Also,
listening room sizes differ, so it is hard to give a simple answer. On
the other hand, I have heard very few people complain if they have power
amps that output 200W/ch cleanly, and it is relatively easy to find
those without fans or other unusual cooling requirements.

"chung" wrote in message
t...
BAF wrote:
If you want some really good sites for audio, follow these two url's.

www.linkwitzlab.com

http://sound.westhost.com/index2.html

BAF

Thanks for the link to Siegfried Linkwitz's website. On the "Links"
page, here's what he said: My motto is "True to the original", which
means true to what has been placed on the storage medium be it CD, DAT
or whatever.

Great words to keep in mind as we pursue this hobby.


Well, my motto is to have fun with audio:-) High quality, but not to the
extreme. Stay away from the religous stuff and use common sense and read up
on issues you don't understand, don't believe in fairy tales and " golden
ears ". If you can't hear a difference, that means it is good enough for
you. And please, please, understand the importance of acoustics before
putting a 10.000$ hifi system in you living room.

Have fun!

:-)

BAF

"BAF" wrote
.. And please, please, understand the importance of acoustics before
putting a 10.000$ hifi system in you living room.

Now you tell me. My room is ordinary and untreated and sounds fine for
conversation. I do have a $10,000 system (retail prices) not counting cables
and wires (this is RAGE, you know) or alternate components not currently in
use. Yet I keep hoping for more enjoyable realism when I listen. While I
have just decided to start playing with room treatments I am a skeptic
about how much improvement they can make. I'll do it mainly because I have
left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have free toys. But
these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was
beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll see
how the home experiment works out..
My skepticism about room treatments is based on a peculiar line of
reasoning. Here it is: I think if I were to remove the stereo from any
home listening rooms and have a group of musicians stand and play in that
location I would have a result that was far superior to a CD of those
musicians played over the stereo that was removed. I can't resist saying
that I am sure it would sound just like they were there in the room. But
maybe if I moved the musicians a couple more feet into the room.....
I may patch my room acoustics, but I think the real problem is the
shortcomings of the stereo systems. Or the CDs? Damn this hobby!

Wylie Williams

Wylie Williams wrote:
"BAF" wrote
. And please, please, understand the importance of acoustics before
putting a 10.000$ hifi system in you living room.

Now you tell me. My room is ordinary and untreated and sounds fine for
conversation. I do have a $10,000 system (retail prices) not counting cables
and wires (this is RAGE, you know) or alternate components not currently in
use. Yet I keep hoping for more enjoyable realism when I listen. While I
have just decided to start playing with room treatments I am a skeptic
about how much improvement they can make.

They are likely to make more difference than changing out a CD player,
or amp, or cables. The audibility of treating first reflections, for
example is fully supported by acoustic theory.

I'll do it mainly because I have
left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have free toys. But
these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was
beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll see
how the home experiment works out..

Or maybe they're the wrong treatments. What are they?

My skepticism about room treatments is based on a peculiar line of
reasoning. Here it is: I think if I were to remove the stereo from any
home listening rooms and have a group of musicians stand and play in that
location I would have a result that was far superior to a CD of those
musicians played over the stereo that was removed.

Not necessarily.

I can't resist saying
that I am sure it would sound just like they were there in the room.


But it might sound awful.



--
-S.

...
Wylie Williams wrote:
..

I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have
free toys. But
these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was
beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll
see
how the home experiment works out..

"Steven Sullivan" wrote Or maybe they're the wrong
treatments. What are they?


I have all sorts to work with, but the room is not very friendly to
treatments. From ASC I have 3 Cube Towers and 5 Sound Panels. From Auralex
I have 4 Venus bass Traps, 4 2'x2'x24" Cornerfills, 12 T-Fusors, and a few
square feet of 2" absorbent foam. I also have some sisal wallcovering that
is surprisingly absorbnt - it even comes with specs!

So the problem is not that I lack materials, it more that I lack the
will to do anythng too drastic the appearance of my living room. That first
reflection off the wall to the right is a lost cause: My right speaker is 3
feet from that wall. Coming toward me from the wall is 1 foot of wall,
then a window, one foot of wall interrupted by with a step out of 8", then a
fireplace, followed by another foot of wall with a step back, another
window, and a foot of wall to the corner. I can't imagine anything to on
that wall. The wall behind me is 6 feet of glass, a 6 foot opening, and 6
more feet of glass. I don't want to treat that wall either. The other 2
walls are more normal, the one on the left has an 8 foot opening into a
dining room, and the speaker wall has only one opening, a 4 foot doorway on
the left 3 feet from the corner. Not much room to play. The wall behind
the speakers is available, and the wall to the left has a 5 ft section
available for treatment, but it's 9 feet away from the left speaker, so I
don't hold out hope that treating that wall will help much.

My equipment cabinet is a low one - 5' wide and 2 ' high, between the
speakers. I just moved it out from the wall a foot and put some absorbent
behind it raching up to about a foot above the top of the speakers. - the 4
Cornerfills are a base for the Venus Bass Traps. It seems a bit more
musical this way but not a drastic change. .

I am using a tower speaker, with 2 woofers low and MTM above. It's
good, but I am considering dragging up a pair of Apogee Centaurs from
basement storage. They sounded amazingly holographic when I was in the exact
right spot, but were a bit fatiguing. I have wondered if some diffusion and
absorbtion behind them would make them more pleasant. I especially wonder if
the an array of the T-Fusors would let the imaging be more accessible around
the room.

Wylie Williams

Wylie Williams wrote:
..
Wylie Williams wrote:
.

I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have
free toys. But
these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room was
beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong. We'll
see
how the home experiment works out..

"Steven Sullivan" wrote Or maybe they're the wrong
treatments. What are they?


I have all sorts to work with, but the room is not very friendly to
treatments. From ASC I have 3 Cube Towers and 5 Sound Panels. From Auralex
I have 4 Venus bass Traps, 4 2'x2'x24" Cornerfills, 12 T-Fusors, and a few
square feet of 2" absorbent foam. I also have some sisal wallcovering that
is surprisingly absorbnt - it even comes with specs!

So the problem is not that I lack materials, it more that I lack the
will to do anythng too drastic the appearance of my living room. That first
reflection off the wall to the right is a lost cause: My right speaker is 3
feet from that wall. Coming toward me from the wall is 1 foot of wall,
then a window, one foot of wall interrupted by with a step out of 8", then a
fireplace, followed by another foot of wall with a step back, another
window, and a foot of wall to the corner. I can't imagine anything to on
that wall.

etc reasons why Wylie does not want to actually treat his room

Well, then, I'd say that the problem is not the room , or the treatments, or
the validity of room treatment per se, but simply your unwillingness to
actually treat the room according to some basic principles.

--
-S.

"Wylie Williams" wrote:

...describing his room .....

Curtains, wall hangings and drapes often make good acoustical treatments. They
can also be retracted when not in use for visual effect.

"Wylie Williams" wrote in message
news:%%W2b.271699$Ho3.36036@sccrnsc03...
..
Wylie Williams wrote:
.

I have left over sound treatments from the store I closed, so I have
free toys. But
these treatments made little difference in the store. Maybe the room
was
beyond hope, maybe I hoped for too much, maybe I used them wrong.
We'll
see
how the home experiment works out..

"Steven Sullivan" wrote Or maybe they're the wrong
treatments. What are they?


I have all sorts to work with, but the room is not very friendly to
treatments. From ASC I have 3 Cube Towers and 5 Sound Panels. From
Auralex
I have 4 Venus bass Traps, 4 2'x2'x24" Cornerfills, 12 T-Fusors, and a few
square feet of 2" absorbent foam. I also have some sisal wallcovering
that
is surprisingly absorbnt - it even comes with specs!

So the problem is not that I lack materials, it more that I lack the
will to do anythng too drastic the appearance of my living room. That
first
reflection off the wall to the right is a lost cause: My right speaker is
3
feet from that wall. Coming toward me from the wall is 1 foot of wall,
then a window, one foot of wall interrupted by with a step out of 8", then
a
fireplace, followed by another foot of wall with a step back, another
window, and a foot of wall to the corner. I can't imagine anything to on
that wall. The wall behind me is 6 feet of glass, a 6 foot opening, and 6
more feet of glass. I don't want to treat that wall either. The other 2
walls are more normal, the one on the left has an 8 foot opening into a
dining room, and the speaker wall has only one opening, a 4 foot doorway
on
the left 3 feet from the corner. Not much room to play. The wall behind
the speakers is available, and the wall to the left has a 5 ft section
available for treatment, but it's 9 feet away from the left speaker, so I
don't hold out hope that treating that wall will help much.

My equipment cabinet is a low one - 5' wide and 2 ' high, between the
speakers. I just moved it out from the wall a foot and put some absorbent
behind it raching up to about a foot above the top of the speakers. - the
4
Cornerfills are a base for the Venus Bass Traps. It seems a bit more
musical this way but not a drastic change. .

I am using a tower speaker, with 2 woofers low and MTM above. It's
good, but I am considering dragging up a pair of Apogee Centaurs from
basement storage. They sounded amazingly holographic when I was in the
exact
right spot, but were a bit fatiguing. I have wondered if some diffusion
and
absorbtion behind them would make them more pleasant. I especially wonder
if
the an array of the T-Fusors would let the imaging be more accessible
around
the room.

Wylie Williams


Wylie, drapes on the windows (to include the one just to the right of your
right speaker) should cut a lot of early reflection from the right side.
Perhaps you already have this, though.

i think that power is not so important - if you want to have good
quality of sound on "ALL medium efficiency speakers" you should buy (or
make yourself) high quality amp.
better buy 50W amp high end than 100W that fit all kind of speakers...
if you want to use speakers at home 50W is enough, and notice that more
power produce more disortions, and is not necessery at home.

greets

Wylie Williams wrote:

One would hope that an amplifier could be purchased and placed in a system
in confidence that it would drive any speaker well enough to extract its
best performance. I asked for help finding out how to identify such an amp
in the thread "Competent Design", and received many good recommendations.
But one issue remains unclear to me: Is the almost universal recommendation
of 100 watts per channel; really enough power for ALL medium efficiency
speakers? I ask this because I have read often in speaker reviews that the
speaker under review sounded good with moderate power, but performed much
better with higher power amp, with no particular reason given. The remark
is made about some speakers in the 88 to 90 db 1w/1m SPL rating range, which
seems to be a normal figure, but not others. I recounted one personal
experience when I auditioned a pair of strapped Hafler 500 amplifiers on
Dahlquist DQ10s and heard incredibly deeper tighter more powerful bass
response than any DQ10 had ever produced in that showroom. The reviews and
this one experience make me wonder how many watts are needed to assure top
performance from ANY speaker. Silly to have a speaker and not hear all it
can do.

Unfortunately there is an accompanying complicating question- "Whose watts"?
Are some amplifiers rated (honestly I hope) at 100 wpc effectively more
capable of driving speakers than the others?

Wylie Williams