The latest good wireless speakers come in all shapes and sizes. Finding the ideal type for your application can often be tough. There is a flood of various names and terms describing speaker performance. Moreover, each producer publishes a large amount of specs, such as “sound pressure level”, “dynamic range” and so forth. I am going to give a quick overview of the output power rating to help you better comprehend the importance of this term and how it relates to the performance of a loudspeaker.
Some of the terms which loudspeaker makers exhibit often are deceptive and do not automatically offer a good sign of the true performance of the loudspeaker. Next I will provide some facts regarding “speaker power”. This specification is often misunderstood. It is essential to look fairly closely at how the producer shows this rating.
The power of the loudspeakers is given as “wattage”. This shows how loud your speaker can sound. Depending on your application, you can get a small speaker enduring only a few watts or a larger one enduring several hundred watts. A lot of smaller home speakers merely can be driven with a few watts power which usually is sufficient for a small room. If you intend to shake your walls then you clearly wish to opt for a loudspeaker that has up to a few hundred watts. For best music quality, you might want to pick a speaker which has higher power than you require as many speakers will show rising distortion as the audio power goes up.
There are two common methods to display speaker wattage. These are “peak power” and “rms power”. “Peak power” describes how much power the speaker can tolerate for a brief burst. Then again, “rms power” shows how much wattage the speaker can endure for a longer amount of time without being damaged. The peak spec has been to some extent abused by vendors stating huge peak audio wattage while their loudspeakers are in fact very small and unable to handle more than merely several watts rms power.
Nonetheless, while the rms spec is going to tell you more about the speaker’s real performance, be certain though that the speaker has a peak wattage spec that is quite a bit higher than the rms spec. This is because very likely you are going to be utilizing the loudspeaker to reproduce music or voice. Music and voice signals by nature always vary in terms of their power, i.e. the power envelope of the signal is going to vary over time. The main reason is that music signals will have short bursts of high power which the loudspeaker has to handle. Rms power is measured with a uniform sine signal which barely compares with a music signal in terms of the power envelope.
However, be aware of the fact that the maximum output power also is dependent upon what kind of loudspeakers you are using, in particular the impedance of the loudspeakers. Loudspeakers regularly have impedances between 4 and 8 Ohms. An audio amplifier which has a set internal supply voltage will have a maximum output signal swing which is limited by that supply voltage. If you are driving an 8-Ohm speaker then your amp must provide twice the output voltage than when driving a 4-Ohm speaker in order to deliver the same level of power to your loudspeaker. As a result often maximum output wattage is specified for a particular speaker impedance.
You can get further information about wireless speakers as well as surround sound system models from Amphony’s website.