Several ideas about speaker power

Today’s wireless speakers presented at http://www.amphony.com/products/wireless-speaker.htm come in all shapes and sizes. Finding the perfect type for your application can often be tricky. There is a large number of various names and terms describing loudspeaker performance. What’s more, every producer publishes a large amount of specifications, such as “sound pressure level”, “dynamic range” and so on. I am going to clarify the specification “speaker wattage” a bit more in this article. “Output power” is one of the most fundamental terms describing loudspeaker performance. Though, it is often misunderstood. Various vendors also in the past have utilized this specification in a confusing way to hide the real performance. Loudspeaker specifications are sometimes hard to understand given that they are not completely standardized. Hence it might be hard to figure out the true performance of the speaker merely by looking at the specs. A decent method though is to perform a listening test before buying your speaker. Throughout this test you ideally want to install the speakers in a comparable setting as your application. Now I am going to explain the “output power” rating of speakers. This spec is one of the most basic and possibly important ratings to understand. “Wattage” is occasionally also known as “Power” or “speaker output power”. To put it in a nutshell, “wattage” relates to how much power your speaker can endure without damage. The bigger this number typically the louder your speakers. If you have a small space then you do not require much more than a few watts. If you wish to set up speakers outdoors or in a live show then you will need a few hundred watts of power. Most speakers will have rising audio distortion as output wattage increases. For that reason, you want to pick a speaker that offers bigger output power than you are going to in fact require. This will guarantee that you will never drive the speaker into areas of high distortion.

Wattage is either given as “Watts peak” which means the loudspeaker can tolerate brief burst of this amount of power or “Watts rms” which shows how much power the loudspeaker may tolerate for a longer period of time. In history, vendors have commonly favored showing the “peak power”. This number is bigger than the average or “rms” power. On the other hand, “peak power” can frequently be deceptive as there is no standard stating the amount of time that the speaker has to be able to tolerate this amount of power.

These days the majority of loudspeakers will state rms wattage that gives a better hint of the speakers’ true performance. Then again, please make sure that your loudspeaker has sufficient headroom in order to avoid clipping of the audio. Having an adequate amount of headroom is essential given that audio signals differ a great deal from sine wave signals which are used in order to determine rms power. Short bursts of high wattage are frequently found in audio signals. These peaks will drive the speaker into high distortion unless the peak wattage is high enough. Though, be aware of the fact that the largest output power also relies on what model of loudspeakers you are utilizing, in particular the impedance of the speakers. Speakers usually have impedances between 4 and 8 Ohms. Due to the limited supply voltage of your audio amplifier, the maximum output power will be half if you connect an 8-Ohm loudspeaker than the peak output power that the amp can deliver to a 4-Ohm loudspeaker. Thus often maximum output wattage is given for a particular speaker impedance.