Amp Power/Speaker sensibility match

[Gubby]

Dear All,

I recently bought new speakers: Audience Nova T2 (from french Mosquito group).
They are rated 90 dB/W/m .
I drive it with my DIY Class A Pass Zen amp 2x10 W (the gain is not at the max, so I suppose this is more 2 x 7 or 8 W) .

The sound is marvelous (bass , treeble, medium) and loud enough ! (area of my listening room: 16 m2 , volume: 50-60 m3)

I read everywhere that with 90 dB speakers you need at least 40 W per channel !!!!???

Who can explain this ?

[Cal Weldon]

Gubby,

It's all a matter of taste my friend. 90dB is a lot of sound.

Cal

[rabbitz]

If you're happy with what you've got, don't worry about it.

It's surprising how many watts you actually use......... probably less than 5W most of the time, unless you're a headbanger or into music with massive bass content. If you start to twiddle with tone controls and misuse loudness controls then the wattage required increases dramatically.

I remember back in the 70's I had a quite powerful amp and it was rated at a massive 12W and went loud enough and didn't clip.

Don't believe everything you read, even this. Trust your ears.

[sreten]

I read everywhere that with 90 dB speakers you need at least 40 W per channel !!!!???

Such blanket statements are of limited merit.

Room size preferred listening levels and program type
determine the power needed and if your a volume fiend
the bass powerhandling of the speakers.

100dB is a nice round figure, for this with efficient speakers you
need 5W to 10W, for inefficient speakers you need 50W to 100W.

However efficient speakers are usually chosen for high
volume, so to utilise this you need more than 5W to 10W.

sreten.