Watts?

[ENDER_XVICM 10+ year member]

How can you tell, or at least take an educated guess at how many watts you are sending your speakers?

If I have a 140Watt amp, will I be useing 140Watts no matter what or does it depend on what my gains are set to?

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[Biker 10+ year member]

Increasing your gain will increase the AC voltage your amp sends to the speakers. So the Watts are produced by some voltage sent by your gain adjustment to a fixed resistance such as a 4 ohm or 2 ohm speaker load.

The gain setting tutorial explains everything. Just remember set the gains to produce the required Watts determined by which rating is less, the speakers or the amp.

 

[req 5,000+ posts]

take a voltmeter to the termianls, set it at AC voltage, turn amp on, play 1000hz, measure voltage, measure current. *if you break anything its not my fault*

volts x current = wattage

enjoy.

by the way, this will not tell you if you are clipping your amp, or sending any level of distortion to your speakers, it just gives you a black and white statement of how many watts you are supplying to your speakers.

 

[16.6V 10+ year member]

Just use common sense. If speakers are paling within designed frequency range and do not reach the point of audible distortion, you are OK. A long time ago I powered some 60W coaxials with 150W amp and it was pretty obvious when speakers began to distort. When I used clean studio-recorded CD there was no audible distortion 3/4 of the way up. I newer blew my speakers.

From my experience to blow speakers you really have to do something obviously stupid + ignore burning smell of voice-coils for about 2 mins. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/fro.gif.c695f1f814b01c4ad99fe7f8cccadd29.gif