How Loud is 1 Watt?

[PeterSt]

6 hours ago, Confused said:

If we assume 2 speakers with 84.5 dB / 1W/1m efficiency, measured from 4 meters or so / 14 feet (SPL decreases by -6dB with a doubling of distance), we get the following:

 

For a 95dB SPL

 

I have the feeling that you twisted things upside down there;

Nobody is stating that we should perceive an amount of SPL at some point in the room; at least I never saw something like that. Thus, your mentioned 84.5dBSPL is sufficient for me to know what will happen in the room if

- I know the distance (and to a lesser agree room size);

- I know the directivity of the speaker (my directive horns only "degrade" 6dBSPL at ~10 meters).

 

I you ask me how loud I play, I would indeed say "90dBSPL" (peaks). I measure this at 1m distance.

If you ask me how loud a piano grand plays, I again will say 90dBSPL (which is measured at 1m distance !).

If I'd like to play real levels, I could tune it on the piano grand (and cymbals at 110dBSPL will be killing).

 

Never ever I would say "and this is with listening at x meters distance".

What I would say though is: and don't listen to this at 1m distance, which distance  would be impossible to listen to a drumkit just the same.

 

... So this is also not how the Harbeth video is to be judged.

What could be done though, is looking at faces, looking at how far they are from the speaker (which is 50cm) and how they not shout at all in order to talk to each other.

And so if I say that the lot plays at 72dBSPL, it is that measured at 1m from the speaker.

If you say it is 88dBSPL it is again at 1m distance from the speaker.

... Never ever I tried for whatever reason to play at 90dBSPL at my listening position. It is just n/a.

 

Still room size matters and my 90dBSPL is in a room of 12x8x3m. At 10 meters distance from the speakers, we can quite easily talk (but with shouting), and we now know that in my case this is about 84dBSPL.

Point is and remains that an amplifier doesn't know about this all. This just tries to squeeze out that 90dBSPL and how I perceive that is not related.

 

I am not sure this all makes sense. But with my own reference, I could try to perceive the same loudness in that say 4 meter "deep" room of the Harbeth video, want to listen at my levels which is 84dBSPL at the listening position, and thus should imply 96dBSPL from the speaker at 1 meter (for the normal dipole speaker).

But now think again ...

... Those people were talking 50cm from the speaker and you could hear them talk;

Senseless or not, I just talked to my SPL meter (of course at 1 meter distance) and with a little emphasis in my voice (to overrule a virtual speaker) it showed 84dbSPL.

 

Blahblahblah 😁

[PeterSt]

 

11 minutes ago, yamamoto2002 said:

voltage becomes larger when music signal is more pulsive.

 

Very nicely executed !

 

 

This one will show the most because it is continuous square and it contains the most frequencies (infinite amount at pure square).

I am not sure whether it can ever be more than this, but if not, it would be representative for the most complex music !

... interesting ...

 

[Confused]

14 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

I have the feeling that you twisted things upside down there;

Nobody is stating that we should perceive an amount of SPL at some point in the room; at least I never saw something like that. Thus, your mentioned 84.5dBSPL is sufficient for me to know what will happen in the room if

- I know the distance (and to a lesser agree room size);

- I know the directivity of the speaker (my directive horns only "degrade" 6dBSPL at ~10 meters).

 

I you ask me how loud I play, I would indeed say "90dBSPL" (peaks). I measure this at 1m distance.

If you ask me how loud a piano grand plays, I again will say 90dBSPL (which is measured at 1m distance !).

If I'd like to play real levels, I could tune it on the piano grand (and cymbals at 110dBSPL will be killing).

 

Never ever I would say "and this is with listening at x meters distance".

What I would say though is: and don't listen to this at 1m distance, which distance  would be impossible to listen to a drumkit just the same.

 

... So this is also not how the Harbeth video is to be judged.

What could be done though, is looking at faces, looking at how far they are from the speaker (which is 50cm) and how they not shout at all in order to talk to each other.

And so if I say that the lot plays at 72dBSPL, it is that measured at 1m from the speaker.

If you say it is 88dBSPL it is again at 1m distance from the speaker.

... Never ever I tried for whatever reason to play at 90dBSPL at my listening position. It is just n/a.

 

Still room size matters and my 90dBSPL is in a room of 12x8x3m. At 10 meters distance from the speakers, we can quite easily talk (but with shouting), and we now know that in my case this is about 84dBSPL.

Point is and remains that an amplifier doesn't know about this all. This just tries to squeeze out that 90dBSPL and how I perceive that is not related.

 

I am not sure this all makes sense. But with my own reference, I could try to perceive the same loudness in that say 4 meter "deep" room of the Harbeth video, want to listen at my levels which is 84dBSPL at the listening position, and thus should imply 96dBSPL from the speaker at 1 meter (for the normal dipole speaker).

But now think again ...

... Those people were talking 50cm from the speaker and you could hear them talk;

Senseless or not, I just talked to my SPL meter (of course at 1 meter distance) and with a little emphasis in my voice (to overrule a virtual speaker) it showed 84dbSPL.

 

Blahblahblah 😁

I wasn't trying to twist!  Not my style.  🙂  Just looking at it in lots of different ways, mindful that we do not have an actual SPL figure, and mindful that SPL drops with distance.  Indeed, I also said this:

 

For 70dB (Peter's lower estimate), here I calculate just over 0.3watts.

 

I would say that this is possibly about right, mindful of the guys you can here talking near the speakers towards the end of the clip.

 

Anyway, lots of ways of looking at this, so let me ask.  If we are trying to calculate how many watts, what numbers would you use for the calculation?  And if we assume 70dB or so, very close to one speaker, the calculated answer will be a fraction of a watt.

[yamamoto2002]

40 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

This one will show the most because it is continuous square and it contains the most frequencies (infinite amount at pure square).

I am not sure whether it can ever be more than this, but if not, it would be representative for the most complex music !

... interesting ...

 

 

Sorry, I cheated it 😁, adjusted square wave signal output level to show 1V on the meter. I re-checked it with oscilloscope and updated the image.

[PeterSt]

31 minutes ago, Confused said:

Anyway, lots of ways of looking at this, so let me ask.  If we are trying to calculate how many watts, what numbers would you use for the calculation?  And if we assume 70dB or so, very close to one speaker, the calculated answer will be a fraction of a watt.

I considered it could be more complicated; so just some blahblah again:

 

I played the track yesterday, and it is all but a loud track. Also, to everybody's surprise, there's hardly LF in it, meaning hardly anything under 200Hz. There is, but this is lower level sine stuff (remember this is (I think) 100% electronic music (the remainder of the album is the worst you can imagine). However ...

 

If I counted right, once in the 4 main beats there is sub-low, and this rambles on for a second or 2. I didn't really perceive this at listening to the track, with the notice that I did not play it really loud either. Btw, this sub low seems odd as in "an anomaly" (can't see the reason why to do this once per 4 beats). *That* will definitely ask a bit more from the amplifiers.

Now remember the guys (at 50 cm distance) talking about the woofer not moving ... correct. The low that you hear does not come from the woofer because ... it is not low. And feel the woofer during the 10 or so seconds this "on the 4th beat" is *not* in order, and you thus don't feel a thing.

 

Over here it is an all but powerful track - just like electronic music usually is. It's dumb stuff only and not "audiophile" at all.

But now again think of that hall sound in that room in the first place. All starts to reflect and will imply standing waves of different (emphasized) frequencies.

 

I'm drifting off ...

[PeterSt]

17 hours ago, sandyk said:

Weird things happened when I tried to mix this with the audio, with a redirection back to other music on the website

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jc8mufi1lgqb8mf/How loud is 1 Watt (with an 87db Loudspeaker)-0x0002.aac?dl=0

 

Thank you Alex;

The weird thing could be about the track we are talking about not being there at all (the Sonata's track is), while the length of your audio is again 11:x minutes.

But let it be, please.

[Confused]

I am not sure if this will add any insight, but here is is anyway, this is for the Laptev Sea track:

 

[PeterSt]

38 minutes ago, Confused said:

I am not sure if this will add any insight, but here is is anyway, this is for the Laptev Sea track:

 

Haha, probably not. But if this is the Habeth YouTube, you may consider doing/posting the direct YouTube as well (or the other way around). We should be able to see differences easily (not sure what for, but it could be fun).

[Confused]

17 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

 

Haha, probably not. But if this is the Habeth YouTube, you may consider doing/posting the direct YouTube as well (or the other way around). We should be able to see differences easily (not sure what for, but it could be fun).

It is taken from a 16/44.1 version of the track. 

 

I have no idea how to do similar with a YouTube clip.  Or a selective portion of the YouTube track, If this was done for the entire YouTube clip, this would in part be be an audio analysis of an Englishman and a Dutchman talking nonsense, an nobody would want that! 🙂

[PeterSt]

2 minutes ago, Confused said:

and a Dutchman talking nonsense

 

Hahaha, you got me !

[sandyk]

3 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Thank you Alex;

The weird thing could be about the track we are talking about not being there at all (the Sonata's track is), while the length of your audio is again 11:x minutes.

But let it be, please.

Peter

This is the audio with commentary from the original 1W demonstration. I didn't listen right through though., just long enough to verify it was .

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jc8mufi1lgqb8mf/How loud is 1 Watt (with an 87db Loudspeaker)-0x0002.aac?dl=0

 It's not worth pursuing further though as the discussion now seems to be why we need 1IKW or so of power in a typical living room, especially given that very few members of the audience are even  within several metres of the Orchestra . 

I remember too that it wasn't so long back that in the U.K. that most domestic amplifiers used in typical U.K. dwellings had a maximum output of 50W RMS/Ch., which suggests that most speakers had a more sensible sensitivity back then.  Even my old Transmission Line DCM QED 1A had a sensitivity of 87dB/1W a2 1M, and had a minimum impedance of 8 ohms which didn't bother too many valve amplifiers either, and were less sensitive than many of the time.

( Note the 50W with Pink Noise )

We appear to have lost our way, and in the process caused premature deafness for many people.😋

Alex

[fas42]

10 hours ago, phusis said:

 

As to the context pointed out by me - i.e.: realism - serious amounts of headroom are necessitated when what you need is effortlessly reproduced dynamic peaks of +110dB's, provided the source material is recorded properly to accommodate true dynamic swings. Say there are instances of 115dB's peaks and we need headroom "space" on top of that no lower than 10dB's, and what remains are very few "hi-fi" speakers that would even approach 115dB's at the LP sans headroom to spare. With low to moderately sensitive speakers (with more or less complex and power hungry passive filters) I haven't even mentioned the required wattage yet - clean watts, that is - and the scenario to emulate live dynamics in this typical home setting gets ever more unrealistic. Supplied video by @PeterSt with the Harbeth's is a good indication, it seems. 

 

Realism is achieved when the subjective experience matches what is experienced with live sound - peaks of dB well over 100 are not necessary for this to happen; what triggers the sensation of realism is a combination of the volume level and quality - lack of distortion. Most hifi either gets volume, or quality - not both at the same time ... the magic happens when you replace "or", with "and" 🙂.

 

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Have to completely disagree here; a "normal bookshelf" speaker run full-range can't achieve realistic dynamics - if what you mean is a <90dB sensitivity package with a no larger than 8" bass/mid + a dome tweeter - let alone "quite easily." It's simply out of the realm of any possibility. What miraculous "right measures" do you have in mind to alleviate the physically imposed shortcomings of this type a speaker to achieve what you claim? Because as you say, physics haven't changed.

 

People seem to have huge problems dealing with this ... have you never been in a pub or bar with tiny PA speakers set up for the band, no bigger than desktop pro monitors? I have - and they are deafening ... literally. The sound levels are monstrous - you can hear them from a block away ... now, where are the physics that allow this to occur, but stop the same size units in the home getting even vaguely in the same SPL range?

 

Yes, of course the PA units are highly distorting ... but they are producing extremely intense dB levels.

 

Quote

 

If you were to use a, say, 8" high eff. pro segment bass/mid, high-passed it below 80-100Hz (below which it wouldn't do any good anyway), added a capable compression driver fitted to a horn/waveguide crossed in the 1-1.5kHz region and, preferably, coupled it actively and augmented with a pair of high eff. big subs, you would certainly get closer to realistic dynamics.  

 

The cones moving  backwards and forwards aren't the problem - it's the quality of the signal being fed to them that lets the side down.

 

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No shit, realistic dynamics reproduced effortlessly isn't a walk in the park for all pro segment speakers + amps in a home environment, so lets get real: if what we maintain is realism with dynamics, count out most of the typical "hi-fi" variations of gear. By and large it simply won't do. 

 

Most people have never experienced how realistic very ordinary spec'ed gear, especially speakers, can come across as - as my wife say, she feels extremely privileged to be able to enjoy audio working as well as I achieve. Note, this is within the capability of the vast majority of rigs - but they fail to live up to their potential because the necessary refining of the chain is not carried out.

[sandyk]

This time with the original video AND 525kb/s .aac Audio

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fgukyirdrus4hua/How loud is 1 Watt (with an 87db Loudspeaker).mp4?dl=0

[fas42]

An experience that occurred many years ago just popped back in my memory - I've mentioned it a couple of times on forums ...

 

Went to a large, everything and the kitchen sink store - the main Harvey Norman outlet in Sydney. They had a good audio/video area, with decent brands - I was interested in Klipsch at the time, and they had a couple of sub-$1000 column speakers there - the bigger unit wasn't so balanced; the smaller one came across well. It was hooked up to one of those reasonable Panasonic/Sony/... AV receivers that are everywhere - can't recall the brand; tried a well recorded driving blues albums - and it made good noises. How much volume could it do? Well, I kept pushing and pushing the level - and it was still clean as a whistle - now at intense, live band levels - the sound was spilling out of the cosy, smallish audio space, and expanding out to fill the store volume ...

 

Couldn't last - a store chappy came running across from the other side ... "Turn it down, turn it down !!" 😈

 

So, how come this happened? The Klipsch were their typical a bit above average sensitivity, 96dB or so, with a very benign 8 ohm impedance - a walk in the park for the very ordinary, 'mid-fi', Japanese amplifier unit - so, dynamics to burn were on tap - and, were delivered. My takeaway thought was, how superior this was as a listening experience, compared to the usual weak-kneed effort from an 'audiophile' setup ... 😉

[Confused]

If I have given the impression that we need 1kW of power for domestic listening, then let me clarify that this is not my view. 

 

Quite the opposite in fact. 

 

I did state this in my "do the math" post: It is interesting to play with the numbers though.  With these not particularly efficient Harbeths in a decent sized room, to get a peak SPL of 105dB at a 14 feet listening position you would need about 1000 watts....

 

The above is just playing with the numbers, I had chosen 14 feet, because it looks about right for the room in the Harbeth video, and it is about 4 meters, which is good for calculations, with typical speakers spl drops by -6dB with a doubling of distance, 4 meters is a doubling of 1 meter distance, twice.  For clarity, I do not listen at spl's of 105dB, most of my listening is probably in the 75dB to 90dB range, not that I am checking this all the time with an spl meter.  I chose the 105dB figure as it has been mentioned by others as a peak value.  Personally I do not enjoy listening at over 100dB.  The figure of 1000 watts is mathematics, a calculation, not a recommendation.  Anyone else can play with the numbers if they wish, the mathematics is fairly straight forward, or use something like the link below, which is easy to use and quite good fun to play with.  (if you like this kind of thing)

 

https://myhometheater.homestead.com/splcalculator.html

 

Note that in the same post I stated this: 

 

For 70dB (Peter's lower estimate), here I calculate just over 0.3watts.

 

Going again with 88dB spl, but assuming you are 1m away from 1 speaker.  (Mindful of when the three guys were near one speaker in the video), you need about 2 watts.

 

So why was I posting all this?  Well, I think there is something mysterious going on in the Harbeth video, something that to me that does not make sense, something I do not understand.  Maybe we cannot solve this mystery?  But I think that if we could, there could be something to learn here. 

 

Knowledge is good, if we can solve the mystery, an improvement in understanding is the prize. 

 

I shall restate what I consider the "mystery" to be as clearly and simply as I can in my next post.  If anyone can provide some insight that might help to solve this one I would be grateful.

[Confused]

Can we solve this conundrum?

 

Let's look again at the Harbeth video.  As mentioned before, we can see the number of watts as displayed on the CH Precision amps, but there was no measurement of SPL in the room.  This is unfortunate, but is is what we have here.

 

Peter estimated an SPL of 70dB or so, Frank and myself went for 88dB.  OK, quite a range, but for the sake of simplicity and clarity in restating what puzzles me here, lets go with an SPL of about 84.5dB.  This is within the range of our estimates of in room SPL, so "about right", and it also happens to match the SPL efficiency number for the Harbeths, 1w at 1m, simplifying the mathematics.

 

So without needing to play too much with the mathematics here, to get the SPL figures that we think are running in the room in the video, we need 1 watt to produce the aforementioned 84.5dB SPL.

 

The above is simple.  But then we see the power meters on the CH Precisions indicating 500 to 740w as a peak value.  Why is this?  A simple answer is to dismiss the power meters as a gimmick and state the numbers are clearly nonsense.  The thing is, I do not think this is the case, and does not solve the "mystery".

 

Consider that Stereophile tested a similar CH Precision amp, with the same power meter system.  The Stereophile measurements state the following:

 

When I started testing the amplifier's output power, I fed the balanced input at 1kHz tone at 188mV, which resulted in exactly 1W into 8 ohms; the M1.1's meter read 2.3W.4 In its mono mode

 

Footnote 2: CH Precision says the meter on the M1.1 shows peak power, not RMS power; the rest of the discrepancy they attribute to a measuring technique that avoids adding components in series with the output signal.

 

So from the above, we can deduce that when running at 1 w RMS, the display on the CH Precision should be about 2.3w peak.  OK, this was with a 1kHz tone, so with music we would expect this to peak be maybe a little higher.

 

Earlier in this post we have established that the Harbeth's should be utilising about 1w to produce the SPL of about 84.5dB in the room.  Based on the Stereophile measurements, this would give an indication of 2.3 watts or so on the CH Precision amps.  We have calculated that we need about 1 watt, and we know this will display on the amps as about 2.3 watts peak.

 

The above looks straightforward to me.  But back to the video, we are seeing over 700w.  This is fully 300 times higher than the figure we would expect to see.  This is what I see as the mystery.  How can this be?

 

I know that there are some assumptions in the above numbers, and I know this is a simplification of what is happening, relating to impedance curves, the nature of the music and similar.  But the numbers should be in the right kind of area, and yet we see that the numbers are in fact a factor of 300 times wrong.  The fact that we have a factor of 300 times inaccuracy indicates to me that there is some kind of factor that is missed here.  What might this be?

 

I cannot explain the above.  Can anyone else solve this mystery?

 

   

[phusis]

23 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Realism is achieved when the subjective experience matches what is experienced with live sound - peaks of dB well over 100 are not necessary for this to happen; what triggers the sensation of realism is a combination of the volume level and quality - lack of distortion. Most hifi either gets volume, or quality - not both at the same time ... the magic happens when you replace "or", with "and" 🙂.

 

Let's be clear as to your original claim, indeed the general context here being that of "realistic dynamics," and the LF cones of the speaker segment you're referring to would simply be turned into frisbees if they were forced into achieving just that for a variety of musical material. Overall realism, while closely related to dynamic prowess, from my POW, involves parameters not strictly essential for this discussion, but I agree with your stance that a totality of traits are needed to give the impression of realism at large, other than dynamics alone. From my chair though some parameters are more essential than others where overall realism goes - the 'macro parameters,' if you would - and one of the central aspects here is that of effortlessness which ties intrinsically with uninhibited dynamics - i.e.: lack of distortion, as you pointed to. Or, to reiterate: ample headroom. 

 

Compromises are involved most everywhere, but the real one of scaling up the size of speakers to me is mostly about space requirements rather than what is claimed sonically detrimental using larger diameter drivers, higher sensitivity, horn loading, compression drivers and so on (so, the incentive to use smaller speakers may well, in essence, come down to being a bad excuse for what is really dictated by spousal demands and interior decoration considerations). The narrative from the audiophile community to undermine the sonic potential of such a (pro) speaker segment often comes down to banality and prejudice; few have heard those speakers in a home environment and well implemented, so it mostly comes down to expectation and their looks. Where audiophiles have heard large pro segment speakers some even speak of "exaggerated" dynamics, when all we can truly do is approximate them. So much for the habit of listening to dynamically stale, starved sounding speakers.. To my ears what I have now is overall much more satisfying than any smaller (and more expensive) speakers I've ever had, even if there are (to my ear: smaller) areas where they may have excelled. 

 

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People seem to have huge problems dealing with this ... have you never been in a pub or bar with tiny PA speakers set up for the band, no bigger than desktop pro monitors? I have - and they are deafening ... literally. The sound levels are monstrous - you can hear them from a block away ... now, where are the physics that allow this to occur, but stop the same size units in the home getting even vaguely in the same SPL range?

 

Yes, of course the PA units are highly distorting ... but they are producing extremely intense dB levels.

 

That's just the thing: those smaller PA boxes you refer to are very likely to have been pushed near their limits, and away we go with headroom - re: what we've touched on previously that more distortion gives the subjective impression of higher levels of perceived sound pressure. Some years ago there was this late summer party going on that was spread over a larger area of the streets of the inner section of the city where I live (university and such starting up), and one of those rigs - not small by any means - played trance, house, techno and the likes. Coming up to this rig, even from afar, I could feel in my body the sheer tactile physicality and force from those speakers. When I approached the stage and standing right in front of it the SPL was massive, intimidating even, and yet the sound was so clean and coherent that I couldn't get myself to move away for awhile, standing there in giddy and bewildered awe. I was WAY loud, but it was more a sensation of something visceral and out-of-body than anything "hurts my ears"-loud.

 

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The cones moving  backwards and forwards aren't the problem - it's the quality of the signal being fed to them that lets the side down.

 

Again: emulating realistic dynamics there's no replacement for displacement. Pragmatically speaking the bottleneck here is malnourished dimensioning of speakers. 

 

Quote

 

 

Most people have never experienced how realistic very ordinary spec'ed gear, especially speakers, can come across as - as my wife say, she feels extremely privileged to be able to enjoy audio working as well as I achieve. Note, this is within the capability of the vast majority of rigs - but they fail to live up to their potential because the necessary refining of the chain is not carried out.

 

Ah, refinement - the proverbial child of audiophilia, but they're forgetting core physics in the equation. That is, unless with 'refinement' you're also speaking of implementation of one's set-up as is, with all that entails of tweaking the position of the speakers, their toe-in, adjusting the acoustics, listening distance, cable considerations, (wall-)power delivery, etc. etc. 

[fas42]

 

1 minute ago, phusis said:

 

That's just the thing: those smaller PA boxes you refer to are very likely to have been pushed near their limits, and away we go with headroom - re: what we've touched on previously that more distortion gives the subjective impression of higher levels of perceived sound pressure. Some years ago there was this late summer party going on that was spread over a larger area of the streets of the inner section of the city where I live (university and such starting up), and one of those rigs - not small by any means - played trance, house, techno and the likes, and coming up to this rig, even from afar, I could feel in my body the sheer tactile physicality and force from those speakers. When I approached the stage and standing right in front of it the SPL was massive, intimidating even, and yet the sound was so clean and coherent that I couldn't get myself to move away for awhile, standing there in giddy and bewildered awe. I was WAY loud, but it was more a sensation of something visceral and out-of-body than anything "hurts my ears"-loud.

 

Most PAs are far too poor in quality - I gave up going to live shows, completely, decades ago; I was offended by the awfulness of the SQ - and spent a lot of the time, thinking "Why did I spend my money, for the 'pleasure' of being assaulted by this rubbish?!!" ... they completely f&@#ed the experience, for me ...

 

Yet it can be done right ... your description of the summer party sound nails it - but it doesn't make up for the 99/100 duds.

 

"Visceral and out-of-body" is the go - and it results from the sound being "clean and coherent" .

 

1 minute ago, phusis said:

 

 

Again: emulating realistic dynamics there's no replacement for displacement. Pragmatically speaking the bottleneck here is malnourished dimensioning of speakers. 

 

Nope. It's the 'dimensions' of the circuity - you only need displacement for the very lowest frequencies, which are musically not very interesting ... put it this way - I have not yet heard any speaker system to this day, with the mega driver setup, do a decent job with the bass - lots of earthquake rumbling, yes; but music? ... No.

 

1 minute ago, phusis said:

 

 

Ah, refinement - the proverbial child of audiophilia, but they're forgetting core physics in the equation. That is, unless with 'refinement' you're also speaking of implementation of one's set-up as is, with all that entails of tweaking the position of the speakers, their toe-in, adjusting the acoustics, listening distance, cable considerations, (wall-)power delivery, etc. etc. 

 

Refinement is the process of locating the bottlenecks in the chain, wherever they are - and eliminating them one by one - it's akin to rescuing a badly wounded Porsche, with a engine that can barely move the car forward; to the point where "it sings". This might seem an extreme analogy - but subjectively that's what it's like, evolving an audio system from something that sounds "bloody awful!!" to the ""visceral and out-of-body" standard ...

[manueljenkin]

I don't know about speakers but I do nearly run out of juice when driving my srh1540 through my burson fun (2w into 32 ohms) for about 1-1.5w into the headphone for peak transients. Partly could be due to digital ranges not being maxed out but it indeed happens even for ones where the digital ranges near maxed out in a way that there is massive dynamic range. Pretty sure speakers would consume lot more current and power for instantaneous peaks!.

 

For extremely compressed music, maybe I could do with 100mw (the volume knob needs to be dropped down drastically) but whats the point of hifi if your input signal is not hifi to begin with.

[Confused]

 

I found another clip showing the CH Precision power meters.  To be honest, this video is even more useless than the Harbeth video!  There is no indication of SPL's, and furthermore, no indication of what speakers are used.  (although I did spot a blurry Zellaton logo at about 2min 46s)

 

It is a bit of fun though, and some of the power figures shown are quite extraordinary.  (some might say not credible) A little before 5 minutes in the clip, the amp is showing almost 1200w!  The clip is entitled "This is why we do need 1,000w power amplifier".  I am not sure I agree with this...... 

 

A degree of speculation here, but what I think we are seeing is what happens when you take the fairly extreme approach to measurement, that is measuring absolute peaks at 100 kHz intervals, thus these very transient peak levels are picked up. 

 

To put this another way, I suspect that if you set up a similar measuring system for say a 50 watt RMS amp, something properly specified with decent power supply, (this is starting to sound like fas42 approved technology), then that too would show much higher transient values than you might expect  OK - I am not sure if the said 50w amp would hit the same 1000w + numbers that the CH Precision can muster, but I suspect it might get a lot closer than you might expect.

 

Perhaps all this goes some way to explaining why amps with similar measurements when "bench tested" might sound very different in real world use? 

 

Lots of speculation here, but I guess this is why I was asking about multimeters earlier, specifically something that could accurately pick up 100 kHz transient peaks in a similar way to how the CH Precision power meters are working.  As an example, I do have an old Arcam Alpha 10 amp, fairly conventional kit but they do have a decent PSU, I wonder what this might be capable of?  It looks like the kind of kit you would need to replicate the CH Precision power meters is fairly trick, and indeed expensive, so I doubt I will ever do this, so this will remain as speculation.

 

 

[phusis]

16 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

 

Most PAs are far too poor in quality - I gave up going to live shows, completely, decades ago; I was offended by the awfulness of the SQ - and spent a lot of the time, thinking "Why did I spend my money, for the 'pleasure' of being assaulted by this rubbish?!!" ... they completely f&@#ed the experience, for me ...

 

Yet it can be done right ... your description of the summer party sound nails it - but it doesn't make up for the 99/100 duds.

 

"Visceral and out-of-body" is the go - and it results from the sound being "clean and coherent" .

 

To make this relevant for our discussion we need to hone in on pro segment speakers actually auditioned in a home setting, not lives shows, as well as their particular iteration to be the wiser on their sonic potential in this particular context. Myself I use pro cinema speakers, an environment (i.e.: cinemas) where effortless SPL's isn't the only important parameter, but as well clarity (of voices not least) and overall versatility and quality of reproduction. I chose the specific 2-way cinema speakers I use to have most of the central midrange and "power zone" covered without any cross-over points in this vital frequency region, and not least due to the compression driver used above ~800Hz - the Electro-Voice DH1A, to my ears one of the best CD's out there; a sledgehammer in velvet gloves. Dual 15" drivers with light weight cones and low-loss surrounds take over below until being augmented by two tapped horn subs from ~85Hz down to 20Hz (I mentioned this already, pardon). This or something similar is what you would need audition to form a valid impression of named segment of speakers in a domestic environment; not a live show. 

 

Quote

 

 

Nope. It's the 'dimensions' of the circuity - you only need displacement for the very lowest frequencies, which are musically not very interesting ... put it this way - I have not yet heard any speaker system to this day, with the mega driver setup, do a decent job with the bass - lots of earthquake rumbling, yes; but music? ... No.

 

Again, in the context of dynamic realism you won't escape the need for high sensitivity, power handling and displacement area. Yes, more displacement is needed the lower we go (i.e.: it's less needed from 500-1kHz on up), but that you don't find the lowest frequencies to be "musically [..] very interesting" to me is indicating that you haven't experienced what this range, when reproduced effortless and cleanly via lots of displacement area and properly implemented, can do to the musical enjoyment. What's so hard to fathom for many if not most audiophiles is that the capacity for (effortless) loudness isn't only or even as much about using the full envelope of SPL range here, but rather that prodigious headroom equals very low distortion and ease perceived and any SPL.

 

In regards to uninhibited dynamics, or its approximation, the "dimensions of the circuitry" only get you so far if the "back-end" of the chain is inefficient and physically malnourished. It's the laws thermodynamics, plain and simply.

 

Quote

 

 

Refinement is the process of locating the bottlenecks in the chain, wherever they are - and eliminating them one by one - it's akin to rescuing a badly wounded Porsche, with a engine that can barely move the car forward; to the point where "it sings". This might seem an extreme analogy - but subjectively that's what it's like, evolving an audio system from something that sounds "bloody awful!!" to the ""visceral and out-of-body" standard ...

 

Agreed, insofar physics are properly accommodated here ;) 

[fas42]

10 hours ago, Confused said:

 

To put this another way, I suspect that if you set up a similar measuring system for say a 50 watt RMS amp, something properly specified with decent power supply, (this is starting to sound like fas42 approved technology), then that too would show much higher transient values than you might expect  OK - I am not sure if the said 50w amp would hit the same 1000w + numbers that the CH Precision can muster, but I suspect it might get a lot closer than you might expect.

 

 

Note, if one wants the play, "the biggest number wins!" game - then it's very easy to produce impressive stuff. Take that chip amp I did years ago - I pushed the voltage rails right up to next to the absolute max the component was rated to take, so a touch over 40V. And the output stage was current limited to just 10A, to prevent internal damage - now, I'll be ultra simplistic about it; I'll measure when the voltage clips, and the crossover in the speakers is sucking 10A, doing nothing useful  ... let's see, 40 times 10 - my goodness, a 400W peak, isn't ... that ... amazing!! 😝

[fas42]

7 hours ago, phusis said:

 

To make this relevant for our discussion we need to hone in on pro segment speakers actually auditioned in a home setting, not lives shows, as well as their particular iteration to be the wiser on their sonic potential in this particular context. Myself I use pro cinema speakers, an environment (i.e.: cinemas) where effortless SPL's isn't the only important parameter, but as well clarity (of voices not least) and overall versatility and quality of reproduction. I chose the specific 2-way cinema speakers I use to have most of the central midrange and "power zone" covered without any cross-over points in this vital frequency region, and not least due to the compression driver used above ~800Hz - the Electro-Voice DH1A, to my ears one of the best CD's out there; a sledgehammer in velvet gloves. Dual 15" drivers with light weight cones and low-loss surrounds take over below until being augmented by two tapped horn subs from ~85Hz down to 20Hz (I mentioned this already, pardon). This or something similar is what you would need audition to form a valid impression of named segment of speakers in a domestic environment; not a live show. 

 

Must say, to this day, I have not experienced a single horn speaker setup sound good, in the 'home environment' - all the ones I've heard so far all suffered the malaise of sounding, well, horny 🙃. As in, baby, you want SPLs - well, I have SPLs to burn ...

 

Which is not saying that they can't sound magnificent - merely, that I have not yet come across such a rig, in the flesh.

 

Quote

 

 

Again, in the context of dynamic realism you won't escape the need for high sensitivity, power handling and displacement area. Yes, more displacement is needed the lower we go (i.e.: it's less needed from 500-1kHz on up), but that you don't find the lowest frequencies to be "musically [..] very interesting" to me is indicating that you haven't experienced what this range, when reproduced effortless and cleanly via lots of displacement area and properly implemented, can do to the musical enjoyment.

 

Largely disagree. The most impressive setup I've come across was high end Dynaudio speakers, driven by the biggest Brystons - this was PA level sound, at a superb quality standard; doing a live drum kit, only a couple of feet away 😉. Ordinary sensitivity, reasonable power handling, nothing special in the size of the drivers.

 

I have a CD of well recorded pipe organ music - and every time I try this on some person's system, it's always disappointing - lack of scale, majesty, power, visceral impact - not even close, most times.

 

Quote

 

What's so hard to fathom for many if not most audiophiles is that the capacity for (effortless) loudness isn't only or even as much about using the full envelope of SPL range here, but rather that prodigious headroom equals very low distortion and ease perceived and any SPL.

 

Agree.

 

Quote

 

In regards to uninhibited dynamics, or its approximation, the "dimensions of the circuitry" only get you so far if the "back-end" of the chain is inefficient and physically malnourished. It's the laws thermodynamics, plain and simply.

 

Because of what happened over 30 years ago, I have always come at this from a completely different angle - I find most rigs with huge speakers pretty hopeless - all that size, and money, delivering very little that's genuinely satisfying.

 

 

[sandyk]

39 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Note, if one wants the play, "the biggest number wins!" game - then it's very easy to produce impressive stuff. Take that chip amp I did years ago - I pushed the voltage rails right up to next to the absolute max the component was rated to take, so a touch over 40V. And the output stage was current limited to just 10A, to prevent internal damage - now, I'll be ultra simplistic about it; I'll measure when the voltage clips, and the crossover in the speakers is sucking 10A, doing nothing useful  ... let's see, 40 times 10 - my goodness, a 400W peak, isn't ... that ... amazing!! 😝

 

You aren't by any chance the guy that invented PMPO ratings for Ghetto Blasters ?🤣

[fas42]

Just came across this post,

 

No surprise to me ... 🙂. Speakers do not have to be spectacular in size, etc, to perform - just get the engineering right, and good sound follows, automatically ...