Watts and power


Can somebody break it down in layman's terms for me? Why is it that sometimes an amp that has a high watt rating (like, say, a lot of class D amps do) don't seem to always have the balls that much lower rated A or AB amps do? I have heard some people say, "It's not the watts, it's the power supply." Are they talking about big honkin' toroidal transformers? I know opinions vary on a speaker like, say, Magnepans - Maggies love power, right? A lot of people caution against using class D amps to drive them and then will turn around and say that a receiver like the Outlaw RR2160 (rated at 110 watts into 8 ohms) drives Maggies really well! I'm not really asking about differences between Class D, A, or AB so much as I am asking about how can you tell the POWER an amp has from the specs? 
redstarwraith
I am so tired on insufficient information from the manufacturers..

They only tell us power in wattage (in one or another way).
From school it is amps multiplying with voltage gives wattage.

Where we consumer only have wattage then we can not know much of each component the amp gives for example get 100 watts.

Is it 2 amp and 50 volts ?
OR
Is it 4 amp and 25 volts ?
OR
Something completely else?

Some speaker technology types benefits if the wattage consists of high amount of ampere.
But we will never know which amps that delivers a lot of ampere..

Just a another small factor to add to the list.. 🥰
100w pure class A into 2 Ohm ... Means 100W is all you get , no headroom. Now you are trying to change the measure because your anemic claim was fantasy? That's not too honest now is it?


Your selective cut and paste and your mention of phase angle shows you neither understand my post nor amplifier specs. You are making a claim about an amps potential performance that is impossible to make with only continuous power specs.
Optimize, yes we do know what you are asking if say they give a spec into 8, 4 and 2 ohms which many do..
I would try reading from the recognized experts.
D'AGOSTINO or NELSON PASS. 
You will find confirmations of what Oiche lays out. 
Pass has a simple weight to watt ratio
he talks about for his A and A/B gear that I found
a good tool.
Have Fun Shopping!
You mean like statements like this that ONLY apply to pure-class-A and make assumptions about heat-sink materials, power supply architecture, etc. that are not a given in all designs.


One pound of weight for every 2 watts is a good litmus test for evaluating Class A amplifiers. An amplifier weighing less might not be pure Class A. It might be almost Class A, or it might be one of the many products which achieve a Class A designation through trick circuitry.

What's funny is that people will quote the likes of Pass when it suits them, but ignore the other things he writes when it suits him, like

Large inductors in series with the transformer primaries and secondaries can be used to stretch the duration of the charge pulse to the power supply capacitors, improving regulation and reducing noise. 

... those large inductors negate heavy gauge power cords.

Of course, not everything that Nelson pass says/rights is entirely accurate either:
Also, it helps if the power supply capacitors before and after the switcher are very substantial. This is typically not the case, since one of the primary motivations to use switchers is to save money.


Power supply capacitors before the switcher are not "substantial", as small values are essential to achieve good power factor and THD, a typical design goal of AC\DC switching supplies. As a matter of fact, substantial capacitance on the front end of an AC\DC switching supply will reduce the requirement for output capacitance to achieve the same performance and will reduce the overall cost to achieve the same performance.