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Measure amp's output power?

Posted by Richidoo (A) on October 16, 2005 at 12:28:00

Is it possible to measure my amp's max output power without special equipment? I have multimeter, and PC/DAW to generate a 1kHz test signal.

Accuracy within a couple percent is good enough for me. I have rudimentary electrical understanding, not specific enough to do this on my own. I hope that it is a straightforward measurement, and not requiring special equipment. I have reason to believe my amp's output is not up to advertised specs, besides general curiosity.

I assume source input voltage is irrelevant, since it is an integrated amp. Is output resistance and voltage at speaker terminals enough data to determine Watts?

I assume I cannot do this with music as source material, because the changing frequency interacting with speakers will cause impedence fluctuations that will effect the output power?

My guess would be feed a fixed 1kHz sine wave to the input, then measure voltage across the speaker output terminals into a fixed resistive load at full volume? How do I process that data (V, R) to give me Watts?

How do mfgs. measure this spec? I imagine there are different ways depending on your marketing audience and integrity. I am looking for the most valid rating for real world use. It is a tube amp.

Thanks for your advice!
Rich

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