The "watt isn't a watt" argument has been controversial, and I don't intend to start a war on this issue, but here's a conversation between an EE guru friend of mine (who is way stronger than myself in this area) with an interesting theory...
enjoy:
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You know, CG, I was having the convo with Vu, and it seems like there is a "torque" factor involved with amps that is simply not quoted. As an EE it's hard to rectify POWER that is unquantifiable....very disturbing!
I equate HP to watts...we all get 200 hp, 400 hp, 530 hp (Alpine Diablo!)....but what about torque?
These Phoenix Gold MS amps I have now have a lot of torque....more effortless power. Every amp will give you power when you crank, but how many have it down low off idle?
I think as cheesy as the car analogy is, it might be going somewhere in the right direction...
All of the home setups I've heard so far have been, 2 , 5, 10 watts...maybe a 20 watter.
I still don't get it, lol.
His response:
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I'm not sure this analogy is as far off as you think. I'm just spitballing here, but it makes sense.
Recall that Power = Current x Voltage. So to make 100 watts, you can either create 1 amp at 100 volts, or 1 volt at 100 amps or anything in between.
However, the nature of cone/dome type speakers is that current through a voice coil creates a magnetic field, which interacts with the driver's permanent magnet to propel or retract the voice coil/cone assembly. But that force is based on current through the coil - not voltage across the coil.
Therefore, an amp which creates power by producing high current has better control over conventional loudspeakers than an amp which produces high voltage but low current. So in this case, as you hypothesized, current would be analogous to torque where voltage might be analogous to HP. And just as engine RPM relates the two under the hood, the impedance of the speaker relates the two inside the amplifier.
It would be interesting to take one of your Phoenix Gold amps and a similarly powered cheapy amp and do a test which is the equivalent of a torque curve for a motor - maybe plot the output current versus input voltage and the output voltage versus input voltage and see how the area under the curves differ for the two amps...
Interesting...
-- cg
enjoy:
_______________________________________________
You know, CG, I was having the convo with Vu, and it seems like there is a "torque" factor involved with amps that is simply not quoted. As an EE it's hard to rectify POWER that is unquantifiable....very disturbing!
I equate HP to watts...we all get 200 hp, 400 hp, 530 hp (Alpine Diablo!)....but what about torque?
These Phoenix Gold MS amps I have now have a lot of torque....more effortless power. Every amp will give you power when you crank, but how many have it down low off idle?
I think as cheesy as the car analogy is, it might be going somewhere in the right direction...
All of the home setups I've heard so far have been, 2 , 5, 10 watts...maybe a 20 watter.
I still don't get it, lol.
His response:
______________________________
I'm not sure this analogy is as far off as you think. I'm just spitballing here, but it makes sense.
Recall that Power = Current x Voltage. So to make 100 watts, you can either create 1 amp at 100 volts, or 1 volt at 100 amps or anything in between.
However, the nature of cone/dome type speakers is that current through a voice coil creates a magnetic field, which interacts with the driver's permanent magnet to propel or retract the voice coil/cone assembly. But that force is based on current through the coil - not voltage across the coil.
Therefore, an amp which creates power by producing high current has better control over conventional loudspeakers than an amp which produces high voltage but low current. So in this case, as you hypothesized, current would be analogous to torque where voltage might be analogous to HP. And just as engine RPM relates the two under the hood, the impedance of the speaker relates the two inside the amplifier.
It would be interesting to take one of your Phoenix Gold amps and a similarly powered cheapy amp and do a test which is the equivalent of a torque curve for a motor - maybe plot the output current versus input voltage and the output voltage versus input voltage and see how the area under the curves differ for the two amps...
Interesting...
-- cg