A peek at some critical specifications of wireless speakers

Picking the ideal type of wireless speakers made by Amphony is not easy whilst faced with a big array of various terms and specs, such as “sound pressure level”, “output wattage” et cetera. You might not even fully understand the most simple of these terms, such as “speaker output power”. I will explain the term “speaker power” a bit more in this article. “Output power” is one of the most fundamental terms describing loudspeaker performance. Though, it is often misunderstood. Some vendors also in the past have used this term in a deceptive manner in order to conceal the actual performance.

Loudspeaker specs are sometimes difficult to interpret as they are not completely standardized. Thus it can be hard to figure out the true performance of the speaker just by glancing at the specifications. A decent method though is to do a listening test before purchasing your speaker. During this test you ideally want to set up the speakers in a comparable environment as your application. Let me now proceed and clarify the power spec of speakers. The power of the speakers is shown as “wattage”. This describes how loud your speaker can sound. Based on your application, you can go with a small speaker tolerating merely a few watts or a larger one tolerating a few hundred watts. Many smaller home speakers merely can be driven with several watts power which usually is sufficient for a small room. If you intend to shake your walls then you clearly wish to choose a loudspeaker that has up to several hundred watts. Most loudspeakers are going to exhibit rising music distortion as output wattage increases. Thus, you want to get a speaker which offers bigger output power than you are going to in fact require. This is going to assure that you are going to never drive the loudspeaker into areas of large distortion.

There are 2 common methods to show speaker power. These are “peak power” and “rms power”. “Peak power” describes how much wattage the loudspeaker can endure for a brief burst. Then again, “rms power” shows how much wattage the loudspeaker may endure for a longer amount of time without being damaged. The peak power rating in history often led to producers stating big wattage ratings for small loudspeakers. On the other hand, in practice these loudspeakers would not be able to endure bigger amounts of output power for longer amounts of time. Music and voice is not uniform regarding volume. As such the peak power rating is nonetheless important, although not as important as the rms power rating. Ideally the speaker is going to show both the rms and peak power spec. Having a large peak power rating will make sure enough headroom for power peaks which are common in audio signals. Having an adequate amount of headroom is crucial because music signals differ a great deal from sine wave signals that are used in order to measure rms wattage. Brief bursts of large power are often found in music signals. These peaks will drive the loudspeaker into high distortion unless the peak power is high enough. Please note that often the peak power that your amplifier can deliver to your loudspeakers depends upon the impedance of your speakers which is generally between 4 and 8 Ohms. An audio amplifier that has a set internal supply voltage will have a maximum output voltage swing that is restricted by that supply voltage. If you are driving an 8-Ohm loudspeaker then your amplifier must deliver twice the output voltage than when driving a 4-Ohm speaker in order to deliver the same amount of power to your loudspeaker. Usually maximum power is specified for a 4-Ohm loudspeaker impedance. Though, ideally the producer of your amp is going to show which loudspeaker impedance the amp can drive. Please note that some amplifiers cannot drive speakers with very low speaker impedance.