Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo 80 Watt amp to 150.... Is it worth it????

I have a NAD integrated 352 amp at 80 Watts. I have read some people who believe that it is worth the upgrade due to better bass and fuller sound. I have spied a 150 watt NAD for a decent price. Is this a trueism or another wive's tale?? I am driving m60's and I'm wondering how loud you really have to turn it up to notice a difference in sound. On my 352, I rarely turn it past 11 or 12:00 on the dial. That is plenty loud enough for me. I am about 11 feet from the speakers. Thanks........

Todd, there's a considerable "old audiophile's tale" element in the quest for more power. This is yet another area of life in which we sometimes assume that more is always better, but it ain't necessarily so. Keep in mind that your M60s use about 1 watt at a comfortably loud average listening level. Brief split second peaks might use as much as 100 watts or more depending on factors such as distance of the listener, size of the room, dynamic range of the material being played and average level being used for listening. The diiference between 80 watts and 150 watts is only about 2.7dB(e.g. 110dB on a peak compared with 112.7dB)and it's highly unlikely from what you describe that you'd be in need of the small extra headroom involved. Unused headroom is just that; unused.

Hi Todd,

JohnK's advice is excellent, but ask yourself when you are listening, Does the signal sound clean and distortion-free (assuming you are using a good recording)? Or does it become congested and muddy as you increase the volume?

It seems to me you likely have enough power, but the old maxim "you can never have too much power" still applies. JohnK is correct in that having hundreds of watts in reserve may be a waste if you never utilize that power.

Our personal taste in playback levels varies quite a lot from one person to the next and the room size can be a huge factor.. As I've noted on these boards in the past, several of my colleagues in much larger rooms than my own listen at extremely loud levels and on occasion have caused large monoblocs at 250 watts per channel to shut down. (I had to leave the house it was so loud.) They were listening to high-power rock and pop at what to me were absurdly loud levels.

I've never detected these alleged changes in the quality of the sound ("better bass; "fuller sound" etc.) by substituting much larger amplifiers in place of a well-designed receiver when all the variables are controlled. Of course this will change if you go for very high SPLs in big rooms. I'm running a pair of M80ti's with about 80 watts per channel in my modest (2,100 cu. ft.) living room and it is clean and distortion-free at the loudest levels I ever listen at (peaks up to 98 dB SPL about 10 feet away from the speakers). If I were in a much larger room--say 5,000 cu ft or larger--I'd likely bring my 250 watt per channel amp out of the closet to run the M80s.

Of course given the huge psycho-acoustic biases at play when uncontrolled tests are performed (typical of many so-called high-end magazine reviewers), if you think you'll hear an improvement when you switch to a much larger, separate power amp, then you likely will hear it. Is the improvement real? In a sense it is, if you believe it. . .

Regards,

Thanks guys.......I knew I could get a good response here.

I agree with Alan and John K here. Yippee! I have experienced 200W per channel vs 50W per channel. The difference for everyday listening levels is slim to none.