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How Many Watts Out Of My Audio System?

How do you calculate watts in an audio system?

  • I want to know how powerful my system is but I am confused on how you work out a systems total wattage... I have a 600w 5.1 surround amplifier but only have 2x 200w speakers. Does this mean my system is only 200w or do you add all watts up to the 1000w?

  • Answer:

    lol some interesting answers. First as some have stated speaker wattage has nothing to do with your amplifier power, as your speakers are not powered. The speaker wattage rating is only a rough estimate of how much power your speakers can handle. There are a number of factors to help you determine how much power is needed. First thing is to look at speakers efficiency and impedance as this will help you determine how much power and quality of power to get to a given loudness. Of course size and acoustics of the room do play a large factor as well in the overall loudness. Speakers efficiency will help you determine how much power you will need to get to a given loudness. Efficiency ratings of speakers are measured at one meter with one watt of power, hopefully measured across the entire bandwidth 20hz to 20khz. For example a speaker efficiency rating of 89db 1w, 1 meter is telling you it will produce 89db loudness with 1 watt of amplifier input. For every 3db in loudness, (which is double the loudness) requires doubling the power. 89db - 1watt, 92db - 2 watts, 95db -4 watts, 98db - 8 watts, 101db 16 watts, 104db - 32 watts, 107db 64 watts, 110db 128 watts, 113 db - 256 watts, 116db - 512 watts, 119db - 1024 watts etc. 120db being extremely loud. More efficient speakers will require less power to get to the same levels and less efficient speakers will require significantly more power to get to the same sound levels. Impedance determines the quality of power needed as impedance drops or rises it requires more current. The better amplifiers will be able to increase their power output as impedance varies. Also this is not the amplifiers maximum power rating, this is only the amplifiers nominal power rating most likely rated at 8ohms, as this is the easiest impedance to drive. All speakers impedance will vary with frequency then amplifiers will have to produce more power and current. So your receiver may be rated at 600 watts but it should tell you how much power it is producing at lower impedance loads. So it may produce 600 watts at 8ohms but 1000 watts at 4 ohms, or even more at 2 ohms. This will also gives you a good idea of the quality of amplifier it is. A high quality amplifier should come close to doubling its rated power as impedance drops below 8ohms. Your amplifier is rated at 600 watts, but it should say in the manual how much power is dedicated to each channel. Every surround sound receiver has separate amplification for each channel, and its up to the manufactures to decide how much amplifier power they want to dedicate to each channel. Kevin 40 years hi end audio video specialist

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You don't add the amplifier power to the speaker power. The amplifier power is the actual power, the speaker power is the amount of power the speaker can handle from the amplifier. It's actually fairly complex as to the exact amount of power at any one time. The impedance of the speaker varies with frequency so any given voltage from the amplifier will result in a different amount of power to the speaker at different frequencies. You can get a rough idea of how much power your amplifier can deliver by looking at the back for the power consumption rating or looking to see what size fuse it may have near the AC power input. If you know the maximum power consumption or if you know the size fuse it uses then you can get a pretty good idea. The continuous power output capability will never exceed the power in. Most receivers use class AB amplifiers which are typically about 50% efficient so if you divide the maximum power in by two then you have a pretty good idea what the maximum capability of your amplifier is. Given a 120 volt input it would need to use a 10 amp fuse to consume a maximum of 1200 watts and provide about 600 watts. Receivers typically will not deliver their rated power at least not to all channels at the same time so most likely your "600 watt" receiver will have closer to a 5 amp fuse and be capable of only about 300 watts. mk

Maniac

Your system puts out 120 watts a channel you divide the total watts by the total number of powered channels, just because you are only using two channels does not increase the wattage...how ever watts are measured in different ways so there may not be a correlation between the 200 watt max for your speakers and the amps rating. There are peak power ratings, RMS ratings at 1 Hz and RMS ratings from 20Hz to 20k Hz which is the most accurate, peak power will be about double what am RMS rating is so if testing is at RMS rating of 50 Watts RMS the peak power will come out to about 100 watts....also depending on the amount of distortion they allow in the rating...

Lance

What are you trying to really determine? Your amplifier can output "up to 600 watts." Your speakers can handle "up to 200 watts." You are using a fraction of the power available on your amplifier. Side note: in order to double the audio output, you need 10 times the power. So to double the sound of a 100 watt amplifier, you need 1000 watts. Additionally, sound output is highly dependent on the quality and efficiency of your speakers.

bigreg

You have to open the owners manual of your system and it will let you know how much power you have per channel. Do not pay attention to the advertised system that provide a total power of say 1,000 watts. More often they are misleading. The best rating is in RMS per channel. You can not determine the power of each system, due to many variables in signal inputs and frequencies. Hope this will help you out.

bbt91945

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