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In Reply to: Re: MMGs - Better Base With More Power? posted by Accurus on March 22, 2007 at 08:53:25:
Sorry to be contrary - but there is no reason to believe a more powerful amp will deliver better bass, except in the fact that you can drive the MMG's louder with more power - and due to our hearing mechanism's non-linear behavior - the louder signal is the more relative Bass signal is heard. See chart.
Follow Ups:
From one who went from a 100wpc receiver, to a 230wpc amp, to a 400wpc amp, more power gives you BETTER bass. Notice I didn't say "More" bass. Maggies are notoriously power hungry. The increase in dynamics you get with more power is very real. The bass from my MMG's didn't go any lower, but it did get more powerful sounding. Bass notes and sounds have a more fuller and faithfully reproduced sound to them.
Now for the real secret. The bigger amps, all SS, all have a higher current capacity. You can have all the watts you want, but if your amp can't swing the juice, your Maggies won't jump.The other parts of the equasion are rigid stands and a low resistance inductor.
I fully agree with this. Feeding the bass region of a speaker is what drains an amp. The more powerful the amp is, the less it will be drained. With dramatic increase in power, you hear the hell of a lot more dynamics in the Magnepan, iespecially in the bass region. My MMGs, with a modest pro amp, can imitate very closely a real thunder; something they could not do with more expensive "low-end hi-fi amps".
I'll stand by my analysis - your comments verify you are observing just what the loudness countours say. Just a review, with x volts in a poweramplifier give you y volts out - more or less independent of frequency - with the largest difference occuring when the impedence of the loudspeaker varies the greatest. The MMG's have relatively little variation of impedance compared to a box speaker. The MMG's are inefficient so with a 100 watt (20 decibels relative to 1 watt) amp with normal music it might be able to do peaks a little above 100 watts even with complex music signals. With a real 83dB/watt efficiency, that means the MMG's will produce peaks a little above 103dB (not very loud on nice dynamic source material) If you turn the volume up just a little from that - things start to sound bad... But double the wattage to 200 Watts and you get another "Barely perceptable" 3dB - you think you have kept the output level the same - and even if you have you are not clipping those peaks any more and it sounds better. "Not more bass just better Bass"
Hmm, from "there is no reason to believe a more powerful amp will deliver better bass" to "Not more bass just better Bass" .So you're saying all of us who have experienced "better" bass reproduction from their Maggies after going to lots more powerfull amps are correct or mistaken?
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