High wattage means louder?

I was always under the impression that higer wattage increased the "bandwidth". So you have more, clearer sounds. I doubt it increases the loudness.. I'm by nomeans the guy to come to on this topic.
 
In general yes.

The more detailed answer is depends upon a lot of stuff. How the wattage is measured is important. The big one is obviously peak to peak vs. RMS wattage. The next thing is if the amp puts out that wattage with all speakers being driven that way or not. I'm not a fan of either method of loading an amp whether it is testing the wattage through one channel individually nor loading an amp on all of it's output channel since the happy medium lies somewhere in the middle.

Other things include if the speaker can handle the extra power and how efficient those speakers are to begin with. Speakers that can't handle the power output to them can blow instantly. Buying speakers that are 10dB more efficient would be the same as getting an amp with 10 times the wattage difference. Stuff like that all have an effect on the loudness of a sound.
 
Given 2 speakers that are exactly the same, 1 with 100 watts physically going to it and 1 with 200 watts physically going to it, the one with 200 watts physically going to it will be roughly 3db louder
 
Aaaah, okay. Thanks guys. So what would happen(Just out of curiousity) if you used some high wattage speakers on a low wattage amp? Woulkd you just not be able to get them as loud as they could of gone?

Example: 50 watt speakers on amp with say 20 watts per channel
 
right, pretty much.

Also keep in mind that a lot of this is relative, and there are other variables to determine how loud something gets (such as sensitivity and efficiency)
 
Watch out for RMS and MAX wattage. RMS is sustained while MAX is a short burst, so even if a speaker had say 200 watts max but a 50 watt RMS, it'd be pretty soft.:p
 
rms in not linear either, so when if the max is 200w the real rms is not 100w

if your driver will make 1khz play at 91db at one watt little wattage is needed to listen comfortably so a driver on paper at 87db will need far more then one watt to reach 91db. conversation is about 70db for reference

high wattage will give more control before more volume/sound pressure. in the real world sensitivity will define loud better because spl is logarithmic. 100% gain in wattage is about 1-3% gain in spl if i remember correctly.
 
This sounds wrong but its not. If you UNDERPOWER your speakers you will blow your speakers!

You always always ALWAYS want to overpower your speakers. If your speakers are rated at 100W RMS you want to use an amp that is rated well above that, preferably 3x so 300W.

The reason for this: If you don't have a big enough amp you will turn the volume up and up and up and when you reach the peak power of the amp the speakers still have room to play. You will start to "clip" the amp, clipping is when instead of a nice curvy sound wave the amp can't push hard enough and the top of what should be a round wave gets cut or "clipped" off so its flat. This flat section of the sound wave get output from the amp as essentially DC voltage. Speakers HATE DC voltage. DC will hold a speaker cone in one spot. The voice coil will heat up dramatically and will eventually melt/short/blow up.

Try this little experiment, get a crappy speaker you can destroy (internal pc speaker?) take a 9V battery and tap it on the terminals. When it touches the speaker moves, when you take it away speaker goes back to center. Now, hold the battery on the terminals speaker pushes out and stays out, speaker starts to get hot, battery starts to get hot, you burn your hand as the paper speaker cone bursts into flames.

As for wattage making things louder, given the same speaker the amp with higher wattage is going to be louder. Keep in mind the effect of the logarithmic Db scale. if you double the power you get 3db louder, 3db is essentially "one notch" louder. to make it twice as loud you need 10db louder or 10X the power. so if you want to make it twice as loud and you currently have a 100W amp you will need a 1000W amp.
 
So when it comes to speaker wattage basically the rating on the speakers is the maximum you should put in to them under normal operation. If you are playing normal material (like not single frequency test tones and such) the speaker should be able to handle that much power. Thus is makes for a good choice maximum output for an amp. You wouldn't want to put more power than that out or you'd risk putting more voltage in to the speaker than it could handle and blowing it out.

Does that mean you have to match amps and speakers? No, not at all. You can use an amp with a higher or lower power rating than your speakers, no problem. In fact a lot of people use amps lower than speaker ratings because large amps cost too much, and thy just don't need that kind of power. For example I use floor standing speakers rated to 200 watts each, however my amp is only rated to 70 watts per side. The reason is that I've never even come close to driving the amp to the max, and thus it would be a waste of money to buy bigger.

Likewise, you can use an amp larger than your speakers, you just have to make sure not to turn it up higher than your speakers can handle. Unless your speakers are really low power or you like blowing your ears, this again usually isn't a big problem.

All you need to do is make sure that both your amp and speakers can handle enough power to get as loud as you want. You don't want to drive either one past it limits, or you can risk damage to one or both components. If you are worried about that, just make sure that your amp is smaller than your speakers and that it has output protection circuitry. That way, the amp can never drive the speakers too hard, and if you drive the amp too hard it'll shut down.

As a practical matter though, you should discover that other than a subwoofer, you just don't need that much power to get quite loud.
 
MetalDwarf said:
This sounds wrong but its not. If you UNDERPOWER your speakers you will blow your speakers!

You always always ALWAYS want to overpower your speakers. If your speakers are rated at 100W RMS you want to use an amp that is rated well above that, preferably 3x so 300W.

The reason for this: If you don't have a big enough amp you will turn the volume up and up and up and when you reach the peak power of the amp the speakers still have room to play. You will start to "clip" the amp, clipping is when instead of a nice curvy sound wave the amp can't push hard enough and the top of what should be a round wave gets cut or "clipped" off so its flat. This flat section of the sound wave get output from the amp as essentially DC voltage. Speakers HATE DC voltage. DC will hold a speaker cone in one spot. The voice coil will heat up dramatically and will eventually melt/short/blow up.

Try this little experiment, get a crappy speaker you can destroy (internal pc speaker?) take a 9V battery and tap it on the terminals. When it touches the speaker moves, when you take it away speaker goes back to center. Now, hold the battery on the terminals speaker pushes out and stays out, speaker starts to get hot, battery starts to get hot, you burn your hand as the paper speaker cone bursts into flames.

As for wattage making things louder, given the same speaker the amp with higher wattage is going to be louder. Keep in mind the effect of the logarithmic Db scale. if you double the power you get 3db louder, 3db is essentially "one notch" louder. to make it twice as loud you need 10db louder or 10X the power. so if you want to make it twice as loud and you currently have a 100W amp you will need a 1000W amp.
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This is FUD, and WRONG.

Underpowering speakers doesn't break them, in any way. The point he's trying to make is that if you don't have enough power available to make the system as loud as you want, you will push the amplifier past it's limits and try to make the amplifier make more power than it's capable of, inducing clipping.

An amplifier that is capable of making 500watts rms might be able to make 1000 watts fully clipped, for example. In this situation, pushing your amplifier harder than it should be, you would actually be OVERPOWERING your speaker, not underpowering it.
 
No, you actually can damage speakers by running an amp too hard, even if the total power is below what the speakers can handle. As distortion rises, the voice coils will heat up, potentially causing damage. As a practical matter it is hard to do as most good amps have protection circuits that will shut down the amp if THD rises too much for any reason, including clipping.
 
Sycraft said:
No, you actually can damage speakers by running an amp too hard, even if the total power is below what the speakers can handle. As distortion rises, the voice coils will heat up, potentially causing damage. As a practical matter it is hard to do as most good amps have protection circuits that will shut down the amp if THD rises too much for any reason, including clipping.
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This can happen in some rare cases not worth mentioning here, mostly due to inaccurately listed RMS power ratings. I guess for pedantics, it's correct to mention it.
 
So...(Just out of curiousity.) If I got some higher watted speakers(Satelites and a sub) and I swapped the existing sub and satelites on my x-530, how would that work out?

Thanks. :)
 
Probably wouldn't change much volume wise since the amp wouldn't get any more powerful. The only way it would change volume is if you got more efficient speakers. Some speakers are better at converting electrical energy in to acoustical energy and thus are louder per watt of power put in them.

Also I don't think you can do what you want as I think the amp for those speakers is contained in the sub, thus you can't swap it out.
 
Sycraft said:
Probably wouldn't change much volume wise since the amp wouldn't get any more powerful. The only way it would change volume is if you got more efficient speakers. Some speakers are better at converting electrical energy in to acoustical energy and thus are louder per watt of power put in them.

Also I don't think you can do what you want as I think the amp for those speakers is contained in the sub, thus you can't swap it out.
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Okay, If I got a stereo reciever, is there anyway to attach a sub aswell considering there is only 2 channels like so I could have a 2.1 setup?

Thankyou.
 
Also to add to the above question, how would I connect a reciever to my computer? Is it possible to do through analog ports?

Also, what is a pre-amp and is it necessary?

Thanks.
 
Fryguy8 said:
This is FUD, and WRONG.

Underpowering speakers doesn't break them, in any way. The point he's trying to make is that if you don't have enough power available to make the system as loud as you want, you will push the amplifier past it's limits and try to make the amplifier make more power than it's capable of, inducing clipping.

An amplifier that is capable of making 500watts rms might be able to make 1000 watts fully clipped, for example. In this situation, pushing your amplifier harder than it should be, you would actually be OVERPOWERING your speaker, not underpowering it.
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Someone get this man a beer. I'm sick of explaining this on car audio forums.
 
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