To get an idea of the power demands of driving a woofer to realistic levels, get an amp that has power meters. Forgetting whether or not they have a high degree of absolute accuracy, just put on a disc with a well developed bass line and crank it up some. You will see the meters barely move, until the bass line kicks in, then if the meters have a quick rise and decay, you can pretty much track the rythym with the meters, showing 10-100x more power requirement than the highs. I first saw this on a CM Labs 150 wpc amp I owned in the late 70s. Never had another amp w/meters, but it sure taught me the power required for accurate bass.
"Polyamping" A Look to the Future or Fancy Fad?
In a recent quest for information regarding DIY speaker designs, I was referred to the Linkwitz Orion Project. These speakers employ active crossovers and it is suggested to give each driver its own, separate amplification (actually one for each woofer and one for the tweet/mid - three per speaker). Linkwitz recommends the ATI AT6012, a twelve channel, six zone amp (60W/ch). I am not sure about the merits of the ATI amp but, regardless of amp, does anyone think this will be a "growing" design. I mean I have heard the benefits of biamping and have heard tell of triamping but, in this case, "sextamping"? Octamping would seem to be next. All accounts say that the Orions sound fabulous. Perhaps I am just behind the curve. What so you learned folks think of this direction in audio?