Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Onkyo Receiver making a click noise randomly

Analog meters are not fast enough to display peek loudness ... they are design to do a moving average (think about 300mS but don't quote me ). They really give you an idea of the relative loudness. Your uncle's amp at 5W may have been pushing 160W on the transients peaks per speaker (depending on what you were playing) ... So, at 5W nominal into two speakers there is a good chance some of those transients were clipping unless the amp had enough headroom to hit 320W at 8 ohms into 2 channels. Even worse is that the speaker impedance is quoted as it's nominal impedance. It actually varies with frequency so to be clip free it's possible that the headroom would need to be even higher (I'm guessing that the 15db transient factor doesn't account for that ... it would be great if someone with a bit more knowledge could verify it),

Also most UV meter measure voltage and I'll assume for an 8 ohm speaker ... if the speakers was 4 ohms that reading would be twice as much

It depends on the McIntosh model. Some have the ability to switch between instantaneous power and peak-hold. The later models use current and voltage sensing with a chip to derive power and drive the meter.

Yes but i don’t think they had any of that back back then …
I’m not sure about analog meters but today that’s definitely true for the segmented bar meters

Mojo … what think about clipping because of speaker impedance vs freq variation?
I kind of doubt that the 15db headroom rule covers it. Do you think we need add in another 3db to be safe?

So what I gather from the last few comments is that unless you have a very large room where you need to drive the speakers really loud for good coverage, the wattage specs on a AV receiver wont matter as much if the receiver has the other features you are looking for?

I'm still trying to decide if spending $400 more for a refurbished AV receiver on A4L is worth it (Denon x3500h) for the room correction it comes with even though I would be giving up the 4k 120hz pass thru, which I likely wont ever use. Some people swear by room correction, others say its not such a game changer. I have a 9x10 space that is open on one side into a larger basement, but not sure how better room correction will do anything.

You've already seen how useful room correction is for your set-up. More advanced correction will clean up the sound even more.

If you are happy with the volume of your system today, and you are not hearing mids and highs breaking up, then I'd say you don't need more power. You have about 20 dB of headroom in your system assuming a nominal listening level of 82 dB at 8 feet MLP.

Well that was my first experience with it, but the Onkyo room correct set the cross over of the M5s at 200hz to begin with and it did get the cross over right on the VP100 this last time i ran it at 80hz. I changed the crossover to 60hz on the M5s and noticed a marked improvement.

Volume wise I don't think I need more. I can see how people really get into the fear of missing out with audio equipment. There's so much choice out there and features its hard to say if things are worth it to you or not without actually buying it.

Frankly, I actually like the sound that comes from the vp100 so much it makes me wonder if I should have gotten the M22s instead of the M5s. Not that I don't love the M5s, as I do, but its just one of those what ifs with this stuff. I can see why "audiophiles" are always looking ot upgrade their setup based on crazy number of options and price brackets equipment comes at. To me the speakers will be a purchase I will use until they break or outlive me. But its like with this receiver, if I keep this one, will I be missing out on better sound if I get the xt32 correction?

Fun times with this stuff.

I found a couple of online calculators to estimate power requirements. From the Axiom blog, it seems 15 dB headroom is a good conservative amount of spare power.

https://www.crownaudio.com/en-US/tools/calculators#amp_power_required

https://support.biamp.com/Design_Tools/Amplifier_Power_Calculator

Both are problematic in that do you use the anechoic or the room sensitivity? There can be a 3dB difference between the numbers.

For me, 70 dB RMS at the listening position is uncomfortably loud, and my number is 2 W/channel to get my 15dB of headroom.

Honestly I am not sure what a comfortable listening level is for me decibel wise. I can say that the volume level I like listening to it at, it can get much louder without distorting. If you couldn't tell, I am not knowledgeable in the different terminologies.

A free decibel app for your smartphone can give you a general estimate of your usual sound level.

I have roughly the same equipment as you, with the M5HP and an Onkyo TX-SR393. I sit about 8 feet away (see the gallery forum for my setup), and have Dolby Digital enabled (which is ~3dB louder than stereo or stereo direct mode). I usually have the volume between 35-46. If I'm listening to music and I want it loud, I set it to 52 or 53, which corresponds to around 65dB at my seating position, average weighted. I might hit temporary peaks of 77dB at that setting.

I have the AVR's max volume limiter set to 65 so I never bother my neighbor who shares a wall with me. I've tried level 75 when the neighbor's away, and the couch is shaking and I can't even see straight, it's so loud.