I can confirm the fact that 3.6's need POWER to come to life. I tried a few amps of lower power before stepping up to a 450 watt per channel high current amp and now I have much better low level dynamics and much quicker lower bass, before the bass was barely noticeable now it actually feels like it is moving some air. I was skeptic when I bought these things and I tried using my 60 watt per channel tube amp and thought it sounded good till I tried more power and then I realized the bass and dynamics these speakers are capable of- they will produce good sound with vitrually any power but don't come to life till they get LOADS of power and current to spare. It would only make sense to assume that the 1.6's don't need as much power as the 3.6's after all they are a little smaller but I wouldn't try anything under 200 watts into 4 ohms and I wouldn't hesitate to try a lot more power. I am not a technical person I just know what works from my experience with these speakers, so I won't even try to explain why, I'll let the much smarter people before me due the splainin'
Why do Maggies need a lot of power?
It has been genearally accepted that Maggies (i.e. 1.6s) needs a lot of power. Why?
Mathematically, any 86dB speaker should need only 64W of power to reach optimum listening level (104 dB). Why it's not the case for Maggies? One may say that b/c it has only 4 ohm, but there are tons of low sensibility 4 ohm speakers in the market and they do not seem to have any problems like Maggies. Again, one may say that they need current. I think most of the amp is cappable of 20 Amp and wonder if that 's still not enough? If so how much current are we talking about?
I have seen a few recommendation and review of low power amp to drive maggies (i.e. Cary Rocket amp (40W), or Bel 1001 (50W) and a few more class A amp with range around 50W) sucessfully.
For the one who recommend the high power amp (>200W), how lound do you listen to them? I can't imagine myself sitting next to the speakers that have 200W of power fed into them. It muust be awfully loud to me. On the other hand are we talking about reserve power (head room) that Maggie may need at a cirtain time, not the entire period?
Has anyone really been happy with the low power amp with Maggies, either SS or Tube?
Thanks a lot for the thoughts,
Ake
Mathematically, any 86dB speaker should need only 64W of power to reach optimum listening level (104 dB). Why it's not the case for Maggies? One may say that b/c it has only 4 ohm, but there are tons of low sensibility 4 ohm speakers in the market and they do not seem to have any problems like Maggies. Again, one may say that they need current. I think most of the amp is cappable of 20 Amp and wonder if that 's still not enough? If so how much current are we talking about?
I have seen a few recommendation and review of low power amp to drive maggies (i.e. Cary Rocket amp (40W), or Bel 1001 (50W) and a few more class A amp with range around 50W) sucessfully.
For the one who recommend the high power amp (>200W), how lound do you listen to them? I can't imagine myself sitting next to the speakers that have 200W of power fed into them. It muust be awfully loud to me. On the other hand are we talking about reserve power (head room) that Maggie may need at a cirtain time, not the entire period?
Has anyone really been happy with the low power amp with Maggies, either SS or Tube?
Thanks a lot for the thoughts,
Ake