"Howard Eisenhauer" wrote: Is that watts RMS? (clip)
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Howard, I hope you did that on purpose. "Watts RMS," a term popular in
advertising audio amplifiers, has always galled me. I can see no way for it
to have any meaning, considering what RMS stands for, and what it is used
for. :-)

I disagree. In my experience, Watts RMS is the ONLY meaningful measurement
of the power output capability of an amplifier.

I think this is really a case of technical illiteracy on the part of the
people who market power amplifiers.

What gets called "watts RMS" is actually average (mean) power. To
*calculate* this, they measure RMS voltage and then feed it into the
standard V^2/R power formula. The whole point of using RMS voltage,
instead of average voltage or peak voltage or any other measure is that
it allows you to calculate mean power.

But the actual number quoted is watts, not volts, and it is *mean*
watts, not RMS watts. The name "watts RMS" is simply wrong, even when
the number is right.

RMS watts is well-defined mathematically, but it doesn't have any useful
meaning for measuring an amplifier output.

Dave