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RE: Receiver or amp to drive MMG

I have used a cheap-o Radio Shackup DVM to measure voltage to my panels. The meter is not quick enough for music. I have seen voltage of over 8vac flash by. I figure, given the meter is slow, that it may be 10vac.

Plugging 10vac into an ohms law calculator?
R=4.5 ohms. (on low side)The MG1.6 is NEVER below that and has a big bump at the 600hz crossover.
V=10 (measured value)
I=2.22 amps (calculated value)
P=22.2 watts (calculated value)

At R-5.5 ohms
I=1.8 amps and P=18 watts.

Clearly, hi current is a red herring. These are peak values. I figure I am not drawing more than an average of half the power I measure.

If I round up to 25 watts, and double it twice to 100 watts, I should be golden. Given that I have an ASP500 moduled integrated amp, running out of power is inconceivable to me.

NOW, the fly in the ointment. There is a little gem called power factor. PF for short. If your speaker were a perfect resistor, power factor would be 1 and the power delivered and used would be the same. However, ALL speakers are various degrees of capacitive and inductive. This is called 'reactance'. What that means to you, the consumer, is that voltage and current do NOT rise and fall together. They are always 'out of sync'. The MORE out of sync they are, the more power NOT delivered to the load. There are a few calculations which can be done with a hand calculator but the bottom line is that MANY speakers which are 8 ohm nominal not only have the impedance dips you are used to, but some wacky phase angle stuff, too. For some speakers, as much as 1/2 the power the amp can deliever is simply not available to do work. Some amps, even highly touted ones DO NOT like such loads. That's why some speakers are not good when used on tubes. The Rogers LS3/5a series is like.....16 ohms or something, and about 84db sensitive. Great with tubes. Moderate to easy phase angles make it easy to drive. I know most Magnepan speakers are on the EASY side, and all those people saying 'low impedance bad' are not seeing the whole story.
Too much is never enough

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