I have a question. If you feed floorstanders too little or too crappy power, will their sound lack bass, or will the bass be boomy and out of control? I am confused.
Well keep in mind that an amplifier isn't producing anywhere near its maximum power output until relatively high volumes. However, if you notice your speakers starting to distort, you will want to turn down the volume as it will damage your speakers.
As for "crappy" power, it depends on what you mean. The difference between a "good" amplifier and a "bad" amplifier is largely its ability to work under low impedance speaker loads. As long as your amplifier is operating within its limits, it shouldn't present a major bottleneck in performance.
Anonnnn
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Matt, The answer is yes, It all begings with good power supply. You can have the best speakers in the world but if you dont feed them with the power supply they need... well... you know the saying "Garbage in - Garbage out". That is why most people recommend to use separates for music applications, of course, it also depends what kind of speakers you are wanting to drive.
The answer would be "both". It depends on the speaker/amplifier combination and what the speakers demand of the amplifier. Speakers and amplifiers that are put together by the manufacturer (home theater in a box systems)typically have the two pieces designed to each compensate as much as posible for the cheapness of the other unit.
Most crappy amplifiers have output impedance numbers that allow the speaker to dominate the frequency response of the amplifier. Also, most cheap amplifiers will not have a stiff enough power supply to to work into the changing demands of a speaker's back EMF. Large amounts of global negative feedback can try to solve these two problems. But, like any other BandAid, NFB's corrections happen too late and create problems far worse than existed beforehand.
It has nothing to do with floorstanders, bookshelf speakers or those that swing by their heels from a trapeze high above a lion's den. If the power amplifier is crappy and there isn't sufficient amounts of clean power, any and every speaker will show what is in front of it. Some more so than others. Unfortunately there are speakers so nasty the sound of turdblossom in front of them is only adding to the misery.
And, for DA, the point where an amplifier runs out of steam is not dependent on volume levels. Of course, you knew that. A cheaply made, low powered amp playing through very low sensitivity speakers with difficult electrical phase and impedance swings will give up at rather low levels. A well designed and built ten watt SET will survive with aplomb even against 84dB speakers.
