On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 14:28:32 -0500, Larry Green wrote:


My understanding of the relevant physics issues is the same as
yours. I have not seen an intelligent, educated human being put
forth any plausible theory why large speaker wire is justified. 14
gauge lamp cord ought to be adequate.

100 honest, real, continuous, watts of sound are outrageously loud and
are apt to damage anyone's hearing.

I agree with this statement entirely! I used to work in a recording
studio and 'looked after' my hearing as it was a vital part of my
job. The number of times 'bands' would ask for the volume to be
'cranked up' during mixing got beyond a joke. They didn't appreciate
that your ears very rapidly get tired when exposed to loud music and
your critical judgement gets shot to hell! Several hours of
listening to the same track over and over is wearing enough at the
best of times without having the volume 'pinning you to the wall'!


I wonder if they cared about their own hearing.

LOL......as most of the 'clients' were rock/metal/thrash heads they
probably didn't even care or their ears were so shot already they
couldn't even hear a track played at a 'comfortable' working level!



Note how many sound devices advertise "300 watts" of sound, and yet have
fuses that are to blow under much lower power consumption.


While they may advertise "300 watts" of sound the chances are that if
you cranked that amp up to full volume it would be distorted to
hell!


Not only it would be distorted to hell, but instead of 300 watts,
you'd probably get 20 watts max.

In fact, I may do an experiment today.

I have a "consumer unit" that is a Philips CD player from Walmart (5
speaker). I forgot what watt rating it has, maybe 150 or 300 watts. I
am sure that this rating is fraudulent, and want to verify it tonight,
in the following way:

I have a Kill-A-Watt power meter. I will plug this philips into the
power meter, note power consumption when it is playing Metallica at
low level (very quietly), then will crank it to the max and measure
the new power use as evidenced by the Kill-a-watt.

Make sure you are wearing ear protection if you crank it up full ;-)


I expect the difference to be much less than the "rated" wattage.


I would expect it to be much less too. Numbers sell product and the
manufacturers know that 99% of their potential customers have no way of
verifying if the claims made in the advertising 'blurb' have any
relevance to 'real life' facts. In many cases the customer is only
interested in it being 'kick ass' loud. I am constantly amazed at the
volume of some of these in-car systems that 'idiots' are buying today. I
saw a TV show the other night where they did an 'overhaul' of a car and
fitted over 3,000 watts of amplification into it! Nobody in their right
mind would ever run that up to full volume and if they did they would
come out of the car with blood running from their ears!


--
Larry Green