how many watts?

These days if you ask T.C. Mits (The Celebrated Man in the street) how many watts he thinks an amplifier needs to pro- vide in a normal room you are likely to get the wildest answers. They will vary from 20 to 200 watt. Lately, fairly high power seems to be gaining more popularity, much to the joy of many amplifier manufacturers. This is due, to a certain extent, to the efforts of the pro- paganda specialists who would have us believe that our lives are unfulfilled unless we have the latest "extra-super-special- ultra-high-power" amplifier taking up the space of three good armchairs in our liv- ing rooms (and probably costing more!). â– the output from the loudspeakers. Let us start with the first. As the table shows, there is a logarithmic relationship between amplifier power and sound pressure level. The power has to be doubled for a just audible 3 dB increase in sound pressure level. A reasonably noticeable increase of 5 dB needs an amplifier three times as "heavy". If a max- i...