How many watts do you really need?

I had a pair of Totem Mani ii’s 20 years ago and the best they sounded is when i had them paired up with 1000 watt McIntosh monoblock amps, sounded much better than pairing with the McIntosh 400 and 600 series amps or even the 200 watt Classe amp.

It’s more than just watts. Later on, i was using the Hegel H360 which had I think 250 watts and with my current speakers at the time sounded nice. Then I bought some larger speakers that should have sounded fine with 250 watts but the bass wasn’t what i liked. Bought a 250 watt separate amp and the speakers came to life. Now, this amp was 4x bigger than the Hegel and 3x heavier, but just sounds much better. I also used the top of the line Classe monoblocks which I would still have today if Classe wasn’t bouncing around being sold then being back online.

well, my JBLs are designed for a 300WPC amp, so thats what i use. ive used other amps, but they perform best, just as theyre made to, with my 400WPC and 300WPC amps.   i have other speakers that do great with 2 watts, a coupla pairs that are great with 50, 60W and theyre supposed to be. 

so i guess...you make the appropriate parings accoding to specs one way or another. 

headphonesty is a lot of button-pushing disinformation and junk. 

I remember, in the old days, you needed to change the setting of McIntosh Meters to even get the needle to move. That's when I learned we are mostly using 1 to 5 watts, I like reserve power for instantaneous peaks, and meters with 'maximum hold' feature can show you what they draw. 

Enough power to blast is bad for your ears, just good for peaks.

@jonwolfpell 

If you have a lower sensitivity speaker, maybe 85 db/watt/meter or lower & like to listen loudly to music w/ lots of bass in a big room,  you could easily use a several hundred watts on peaks. 

I wouldn't pay much attention to sensitivity. It only covers 300Hz - 3kHz. It doesn't tell you how much you need for bass, especially sub bass, and some speakers have an impedance below 6 ohm around 10kHz. It's not the be all end all answer as it is always used.

@elliottbnewcombjr 

I remember, in the old days, you needed to change the setting of McIntosh Meters to even get the needle to move.

Don't vintage speakers have poor frequency range? I can't imagine them to be as demanding as newer speakers with growing interest in bass.

@bartsw 

Wrong, but they were different than a lot of todays offerings in other ways.

Vintage Speakers typically had full frequency range with larger cabinets which allowed larger woofers, and many had very efficient horn midrange and horn tweeters. Mine for instance, from 1958 have 15" woofers, weighing 37lbs each. (you need a lot of magnet to control a large woofer precisely). They most often had high sensitivity, lower wattage amps were enough power, having nothing to do with frequency

except: bass is the biggest need for power as you must be thinking.

Older ones like mine were 16 ohms, easy to drive, modern speakers in small enclosures with low sensitivity and low impedance or low dips in impedance need an amp with more current. a separate issue, and small cabinets, even with ports, tend to be low efficiency and 4 ohm or even 2 ohm or 2 ohm dips. .

.

So the Vintage Efficient Speakers needed less power, but the article and my comment (except very low sensitivity speakers) is that for nice listening levels, we only use very few watts (far less than many people realize).

My original tube monoblocks had 30 wpc and I could easily shake the walls. Distortion in those days was often given as 1 percent, and all the modern .00005% distortion is for marketing/measurements/spec-manship, not an apparent audible difference IME. The article reveals, the distortion is at max power output, and we hardly ever need that, so we never get to/hear distortion (except a mismatch of course)

yes, small stand mounts are more demanding, but it’s not because they have more frequency, it is because they are less efficient/lower sensitivity. In fact, so many modern speakers are paired with sub-woofers because the small ones have smaller woofers and less frequency extension, i.e. less bass. 

It’s inescapable, you need more surface to make more bass. Ports help, but not like a larger woofer or larger enclosure. Sub’s have tremendous power to keep their woofers large but their cabinets not too large, and/or to push and control a ’long throw’ woofer (to move more air) a contradiction in physics sort of.

McIntosh Meters: They changed them, I was referring to the old logarithmic meters. The new ones are different than the old ones, many show decibels only, some show both decibels and watts, that is a very good indication of your speaker’s sensitivity, and, it gets the needles moving!