I'm noticing that I barely go over the 25% mark on my 45W 8ohm Denon for my LS50, anything higher and it becomes too loud. Has anyone here actually upgraded their amp from a 50-60W to lets say 200W? Is there even a difference? Are you forced to listen at 5% volume and everything after that is useless? Not sure how the wattage applies to actual sound difference and whether or not it is worth upgrading amp or speaker first.
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Do amplifiers actually make a difference for LS50?
- Thread starter simplywyn
- Start date
You don't really upgrade for higher Wattage. but rather functionality, aesthetics and how clean/efficient these wattages are.
It's a Good question that I think most of us have when looking at upgrading our stuff. In my reading on this forum there are a couple of factors beyond rms wattage and SINAD that go in to that equation.
1) speaker sensitivity, room size, and distance from listening position all affect how much power you will use to listen at your "continuous volume level." Speaker sensitivity in particular is under examined. Since you need 10x the power to double your sound pressure level. So 87db speakers need MUCH more power than 91db soeakers
2) room correction has a big impact on sound quality and IMHO tends to reduce the actual spl in the room by removing the room vibrations creating additional sound. Which then require you to turn up the volume to get back to your regular listening level.
2) there is the distortion and noise level at the continuous power level your amp will generally operate at. Check Amirs measurements for some of the recent amp reviews and he does a sweep of distortion from 1 watt to peak to see how consistent and linear it is.
3) head room for instant peaks in your music. For example strong vocals and percussive hits tend to spike the power needs some percentage above your continuous need. I think it's called Crest Factor.
4) power needs increase exponentially with decibels so you need 10x the power to double the volume. So if you used 5watts for your regular listening it may require 50 instantaneously to get the impact you want.
1) speaker sensitivity, room size, and distance from listening position all affect how much power you will use to listen at your "continuous volume level." Speaker sensitivity in particular is under examined. Since you need 10x the power to double your sound pressure level. So 87db speakers need MUCH more power than 91db soeakers
2) room correction has a big impact on sound quality and IMHO tends to reduce the actual spl in the room by removing the room vibrations creating additional sound. Which then require you to turn up the volume to get back to your regular listening level.
2) there is the distortion and noise level at the continuous power level your amp will generally operate at. Check Amirs measurements for some of the recent amp reviews and he does a sweep of distortion from 1 watt to peak to see how consistent and linear it is.
3) head room for instant peaks in your music. For example strong vocals and percussive hits tend to spike the power needs some percentage above your continuous need. I think it's called Crest Factor.
4) power needs increase exponentially with decibels so you need 10x the power to double the volume. So if you used 5watts for your regular listening it may require 50 instantaneously to get the impact you want.
- Thread Starter
- #4
I see, so basically it's kinda like high dynamic range. At 35W, my LS50 may be producing music, but not in the range that it could be producing music. If I turn the volume higher, it's simply increasing the amplitude of the average mean, but not really reaching those lows or impacts that it should be so that's why it just sounds louder without the quality?
In HDR world - it ranges from 0-1000, but if you screen can only produce 400 nits, it won't really shot the brightness of the picture correctly no matter how much brightness you set on the panel.
In HDR world - it ranges from 0-1000, but if you screen can only produce 400 nits, it won't really shot the brightness of the picture correctly no matter how much brightness you set on the panel.
Sorta. Since this is all analog the digital analogy doesn't quite cover it but that example is one dimension for sure. If you look at some of Amirs review graphs the distortion plays a role as well. Depending on the linearity of the distortion % across the entire frequency range you may get more distortion in lower frequencies or higher ones at a given power level. And if you clip (ask for more instant power than it can deliver) the amp it will create distortion as well.
https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/outlaw-2200-m-block-amplifier-review.11403/
Give a walk through each graph in Amirs review of this outlaw monoblock amp and read his description and you can start to see why he posts each graph and how it tells you something individually important about the amp.
Give a walk through each graph in Amirs review of this outlaw monoblock amp and read his description and you can start to see why he posts each graph and how it tells you something individually important about the amp.
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
Absolutely. As long as your power is clean and quiet, you can never have too much.
With so many inefficient speakers these days, my recommendation is 200wpc@8R/350wpc@4R to future proof yourself.
The volume control position has not much to do with the actual volume , most amps have to much gain to include all kinds of products that you could possible connect to it and sadly also for marketing (look how loud it gets barely touching he volume knob ).
Music does have a lot of fast transients so with well recorded dynamic music you could end up clipping the amp anyway .
Don't forget that our hearing is logarithmic , you only get 3dB more for double the power .
Also small speakers power compress , you might not get your 3dB especially not in the bass .
The small amp might actually sound similarly "loud" to a big amp in room but just harsher and harder as it is more stressed.
You might be able to up the wick a little with a bigger amp
but mostly you get cleaner sound .Is it an older Denon amp ? before CD not much was in the 2 volt range for output and gain was for the line sources of the day like tuners cassette decks an old crummy vcr ?
The LS50 is not the easiest speaker to drive. Nominally an 8Ω speaker, the magnitude of its impedance dips to ~4Ω in the midrange. That, combined with relatively large phase means you need an amplifier with fairly large damping factor (low output impedance) to drive it well. The amplifier wattage is not really the issue ...
Stereophile did the measurements:
Stereophile did the measurements:
restorer-john
Grand Contributor
It's not remotely a difficult speaker either. But the midrange wildness is disappointing. This impedance curve makes a compelling case for a three way...
Katji
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High pass filter.
At last we're getting somewhere.
Not power/watts per se. Just getting whatever 120W RMS amp, will be better, but it's like rolling the dice.
iirc, they dip a bit lower than 4Ω.
Topic always coming up on r/audiophile. (They're such a thing there, there is even a subreddit r/LS50.) Some say fine, no problem [with my AVR] , but then you see they've got them on their desk nearfield. Others because they're so much better than any speakers they ever had before. However, many others get them and sell them, move on. But others happen to get a suitable amp, maybe because they hear someone else's - and they sell their big/floorstanding speakers and stay with the LS50. Some of those amps cost like 5x what the LS50 costs.
At last we're getting somewhere.
Not power/watts per se. Just getting whatever 120W RMS amp, will be better, but it's like rolling the dice.
iirc, they dip a bit lower than 4Ω.
Topic always coming up on r/audiophile. (They're such a thing there, there is even a subreddit r/LS50.) Some say fine, no problem [with my AVR] , but then you see they've got them on their desk nearfield. Others because they're so much better than any speakers they ever had before. However, many others get them and sell them, move on. But others happen to get a suitable amp, maybe because they hear someone else's - and they sell their big/floorstanding speakers and stay with the LS50. Some of those amps cost like 5x what the LS50 costs.
It depend on a) How loud you listen to, i.e. maximum spl, and b) distance
and in turn, a) would depend on the DR of the music you listen to..
Album list - Dynamic Range Database (loudness-war.info)
I can tell you what I found in my case, using a pair of LS50:
SPL listen to: typically at or below 70 dB, may peak to 20 dB, but rarely. Most of time it may peak to 76 to 80 dB, but could have been higher because eyes may miss the real peaks.
Distance: 10 - 11 ft
So by calculation, I would estimate the pair would draw about 0.2 W average each, with max peaks to 20 W.
By eyes, I tried my amp that has real watt meters and they did show the calculated figures were about right. The needles did occasionally but rarely peak to slightly over the 20 W mark.
So in my case a 200 W amp would not make a different, but if I listen to 80 dB spl and 100 dB peak then the 200 W vs a 50 W amp would definitely make a different though it wouldn't be night and day kind of difference and would depend a lot of the type of music. That's because the speakers would still draw only about 2 W average, so a 50 W amp should have no problem most of the time except it would clip when the peaks become >8 dB over the average. Bottom line, the answer is, it depends, but in my opinion a 50-60 W amp is not a good idea for the LS50 unless you listen to them near field/in a small room and you don't listen loud at all. There are just too many "ifs", so probably a 100 W/150W 8/4 Ohm rated amp is a reasonable minimum.
First off I doubt your meters are actually reading the peaks and 25% means you have about 6Db of headroom left. In my mind not enough.
Rob
https://www.stereophile.com/reference/707heavy/index.html
- Thread Starter
- #15
First off I doubt your meters are actually reading the peaks and 25% means you have about 6Db of headroom left. In my mind not enough.
Rob
They're the Denon 600ne, the new one recommended... I'm really curious now after some of the replies, what's the point of headroom? Like does that actually make a tangible difference or is it just for ego sizing? (like my car has 500HP but I only use 50 to go everywhere)
Do Class D amps work well with LS50? I'm seeing 250W and 500W ones (might spring for a 500W hypex)
DSJR
Major Contributor
As said above by Mnyb, many amp volume controls do seem to set their 'law' so you're all but deafened and amp clipping way before the 'half way up' stage using a typical '2V' digital source. Change the source to an old tape deck or tuner or a cheaper low output dongle-dac and you'll be at 2 o'clock' for similar volume/distortion I reckon. makes the uninitiated think there's far more power than there really is.
First off I doubt your meters are actually reading the peaks and 25% means you have about 6Db of headroom left. In my mind not enough.
Rob
https://www.stereophile.com/reference/707heavy/index.html
I think he meant the volume dial, but agreed just the same because typically those volume dials don't follow a linear scale, so 25% physically does not mean 25% of maximum output at all.
- Thread Starter
- #19
25% is normal listening, 50% is like really loud and 100% is idiotically mind blowingly loud. That's just with 35W, so I'm wondering if there's even a need to go 200W with an LS50?
Or does it change it differently, 200W just loudness, but more quality watts making the LS50's sound better?
I still don't really understand the correlation of W to quality...
Katji
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Watts are Watts, basically, they don't have qualities per se. Amplifiers do, speakers do.
The main clue here is this:
[edit:] I just came across this...
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ereophile-has-started-calculating-epdr.15497/
Worth a quick skim-read at least. Good explanation:
The example given here is not KEF LS50 but.....you get the picture...
The main clue here is this:
And this:
[edit:] I just came across this...
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ereophile-has-started-calculating-epdr.15497/
Worth a quick skim-read at least. Good explanation:
The example given here is not KEF LS50 but.....you get the picture...
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