Amp recommendation and some related questions/discussion

Alex2507

Alex2507

Audioholic Slumlord
Bumping one last time before I let it die.
I missed this but don't let stuff slide. I may not know all the answers but I generally know who does. This is a thread I subscribed to and you may find some good info in there. Pay particular attention to PENG but you'll figure that out pretty quick.

... are constant/RMS watts from an amp an important measurement? Wouldn't it only come into play if you were using some sort of constant tone that was driving the speaker to use all of the available power constantly? From my understanding of lack of manufacturer standardization of peak power, that seems almost as shaky since peak may be 1 second before the amp burns itself out. Is there some median ground measuring stick, or some better way to read the available RMS/peak power information to figure out what best suits my needs?
Regular music really isn't that dynamic and plays at a pretty steady volume so the RMS is important especially as it relates to distortion. Higher output means more distortion and higher output for long periods means heat which in turn means even more distortion. That might be oversimplified for you but there is an article on amp measurements that has better info.

As far as configuration, I haven't done any calibration or configuration yet, I've only hooked everything up and let 'er rip so to speak. I did this because I was originally planning to add the subwoofer much sooner than I am actually going to be able to. This will be corrected in the next week or so as I will have some spare time thanks to the layoff. I doubt I'll get any great results as it's essentially a 4.0 setup at the moment, but we'll see.
I think your results will be appreciable. IIRC you have a Yammy w/ YPAO. There are a few things to watch out for but we'll get to that when the time comes. I gotta get ready to have my fat @ss man spanked for being a fat @ss but don't fret, I'll do my very best to see that your questions get addressed.

Because of the lack of setup, I haven't bothered at all to try the difference between 4.0 and 2.0 when listening to music, but I imagine when everything is said and done, I will end up running music as 2.1.
IMO 2.0 for music is your best bet because the towers will be much more capable that the bookshelves.

Any thoughts on if running the front L/R off an amp, and the Center and Rear L/R running off the receiver makes sense? Does it put the Center and Front L/R too far apart in power capabilities? I guess I'm really trying to figure out some basic design/setup philosophy for this kind of stuff so that I can learn to match components well (both for my specific system and in general).
Even if the amp'ed mains had twice the rated power of the center, the potential SPL difference would only be 3db (everything else being equal). The duty of the mains and the center are so varied that IMO any normal center would be perfectly fine being powered by a rec'r.

I haven't read those articles that I linked in quite some time and even when I did, a lot of it was over my head but rest assured that if my info is off somebody would be by correcting me. Were you aware of the AV University thing on the AH main page? The 'Choose a Subsection' has further topic breakdowns. They also have a tips and tricks one.

Maybe you'd get more traffic if you included the words 'Huge Subwoofer' in every thread title. :D
 
P

PENG

Audioholic Slumlord
This leads me to the question of are constant/RMS watts from an amp an important measurement?
Since you seem interested in this, I should mention that the term 'RMS' power is a misnomer. A more meaningful term is 'continuous average power' rating of an amplifier. If you are keen on math you can google for more details/definitions.

Wouldn't it only come into play if you were using some sort of constant tone that was driving the speaker to use all of the available power constantly?
I wouldn't say 'only', but yes you got the idea.

From my understanding of lack of manufacturer standardization of peak power, that seems almost as shaky since peak may be 1 second before the amp burns itself out. Is there some median ground measuring stick, or some better way to read the available RMS/peak power information to figure out what best suits my needs?
If I understood you correctly, I can agree with what you aree saying. I think it would be great if they tell us the amp's rated continuous rms current as well as peak rms current specified for durations say 100ms, 1s, 10s, 30s into 4 ohms and 2 ohms, instead of the somewhat useful rated power into 8 and 4 ohms, but that would be just a dream.:D
 
L

Lordhumungus

Audioholic
Believe it or not I wasn't aware of the A/V University stuff on the main page because apparently I am blind :D

Looks like I'll have some reading to do over the next few days.

PENG, thanks for the reply, that makes me feel a little better that I am actually starting to get some of this stuff.
 

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