Worm Alert!For critical listening, yes, it is lower than the 95db average or 105 peaks that are common in my room for really getting into the layers of a song. I'm not saying it is quiet. How do you critically compare the reproduction of a guitar or piano or horn or drum if the peaks are 20db to 40db below the real thing? And if 90 is so reckless, why do some many people enjoy live music that exceeds this level every time - including many kinds of music.
I hope it was total kidding, because that just ain't the way that amplifiers work.
Right, I get that; 80 wpc is enough for all the listening you do. But given the dynamic peaks of classical music, have you tried a separate amp, you might shock your calculations, even at the top edge of sanity...about 88db?
As the article Alan wrote details, getting even near real instrument volumes- say 105db peaks (10db off from real), takes more dynamic power than my Denon 3300 can dish out at my 15ft listening position without distortion - simple fact of math which I assume must be accepted by the group. So while I don't doubt that you are right John, that amplifiers don't work "this way", the below fits my experience perfectly and I trust it is accurate mathematically.
Whatever it is I'm not understanding about how amps work, I'm fine with, since the simple fact more power has increased my enjoyment of music (not so much for theater). Most seem to enjoy the benefits of clear dynamic peaks, even if it is all unicorns and pixie dust.
Give it a try, toss out the slide ruler for the day and just slop around in Chopin's dynamic range!
The below is from Alan's article. The bracketed comments are mine, in order to give my opinion the appearance credibility, and to confuse the reader. Enjoy.
But if it were a real-life orchestra playing at full tilt, and you wanted to reproduce the illusion in your living room of standing next to that grand piano, then peaks of 109 dB would be required. So getting from 96 dB to 106 dB will require ten times as much power again (10 x 10) or 100 watts per channel [comment: without distortion]. The goal, remember, is real-life reproduction of that grand piano, so now we only need 3 dB more (subjectively "somewhat louder") to hit 109 dB [dynamic peak] in the living room. But twice as much power is required for a 3-dB increase (100 watts x 2 = 200 watts). All of a sudden our A/V receiver or amplifier has run out of power! [at 12 feet!]
Of course, it's just a brief peak, lasting perhaps 200 milliseconds (one-fifth of a second), but the amplifier must have sufficient reserves of power to properly reproduce that momentary peak without distorting. If the amplifier has 3 dB of dynamic headroom, it will make it, and output the required 200 watts per channel for a fraction of a second, with no clipping and no distortion. But the truth is that most A/V receiver amplifiers have little or no dynamic headroom, so the receiver runs out of power, the distortion rises, and audible distortion intrudes, ever-so-briefly. The piano then "sounds too loud," to our ears because of the nasty distortion components, so we turn down the volume just short of our goal, because our amp didn't have enough dynamic headroom to handle the instantaneous peak power requirement. [Clean 95db is very nice, distorted 95db is too loud, I agree! Thus, I can now listen louder, but cleaner.]
If your speakers are 3 dB less sensitive than the M80ti's, [which mine might be?] or you are another three feet back [which I am], then twice as much power (400 watts) again would be needed to hit that goal of 109 dB SPL [peak]. It doesn't tax our arithmetic skills to realize that aiming for rock concert peak sound levels of 115 dB (if the neighbors could stand it), is beyond our capabilities. Most of our amplifiers and receivers do not have enough dynamic headroom to deliver this kind of power output without sounding strained. (To finish the example, using M80ti's to reach 115 dB at 12 feet would require 6 dB more output, or four times the power that the 109-dB level required, so 800 watts per channel would be needed.)
So the better the transformer and the better and larger the power-supply capacitors, then the better the dynamic headroom is. [As happens when you get a good separate amp compared to my Denon AVR.]
"The problem with many amplifiers and A/V receivers designed for economy (the most watts for the dollar) is that they make the transformer just big enough to produce the voltage output they need [to meet sustained power output measurements into an 8-ohm load], and just big enough capacitors to supply the sustained, continuous voltage and current they need for continuous power, and then the amplifiers quit, so those amplifiers have no real headroom. On top of this, the power may be calculated to be the rated output for one channel at full power and the other five at 1/8 power. So a 100-watt six-channel A/V receiver actually only has 162.5 watts of total power or 27 watts per channel with all channels driven. [how does that 100db peak sound now, with 27 watts?] The better amp builders, who design for performance (reproductive accuracy for the dollar) rather than economy, will install these big transformers with huge capacitors, so then they have all these joules of energy in reserve to produce the dynamics necessary for the music."
John, your serve.
