MojoLists

Will using a receiver with a higher power rating than my speakers cause a problem? I remember worrying about the speakers in my first system as I had a 130 watt rated receiver with 100 watt speakers. There are several reasons I didn’t need to worry, and several more reasons why I should.

While very low end speakers are unlikely to show any benefit based on a higher powered, quality amp, better speakers can see a very big difference. At lower volumes the detail of the music or movie soundtrack become clearer, the bass is more powerful and the highs are light and enjoyable.

At reference volume the bass retains its form, is clear and distinct, never muddy. The highs never become shrill or strained, which is a sign of a struggling amplifier. More power gives you more headroom, which means the amplifier is breezing along through everything you throw at it.

The second reason I needn’t have worried is because I was under the misguided belief that power ratings were accurate, my 130 watt receiver was never capable of going beyond 70 or so watts. To learn more about amplifier power ratings click here.

Now to the reason I should have worried. Even inexpensive speakers can handle clean power well beyond their ratings. The enemy of any speaker however is power clipping, the act of a struggling amp or a poor power source that begins to cut areas of the frequency range out, send distorted  audio, or begin doing both in a on, off series of high power blasts. This will tear a speaker apart faster than using a sledgehammer. If you are hearing distortion of any kind TURN IT DOWN!

Using an amp rated well above the speakers rating requires some will power however, you don’t want to turn it up above the reference level, there is never a reason to turn anything up past this point, it is the exact volume the sound is engineered for, anything louder morphs the vision of the artist.

Amplifiers ramp up power by doubling the output at every notch. Turning the volume knob from 30 to 29 doubles the watts and creates 3 decibels more volume. This means that you are well below the amps power rating all the way to zero. In most amplifiers and receivers, zero marks the rated output of the unit. In a 100 watt receiver that means you jump from 50 watts at 1, then go to 100 watts at zero.

This of course assumes the manufacture is providing accurate power ratings, which is highly unlikely. Give your speakers what they crave, clean power and enjoy the clear, distortion free sound as the artist intended.

Why are the studios waiting for Blu-Ray profile 3.0 to begin seriously releasing Blu-Ray music only discs? For those of you who are not familiar with profile 3.0 it is a simple update to the existing Blu-Ray versions. Profile 3.0 allows an audio only disc to start by itself, without menus when placed into the Blu-Ray player.

While skipping all of the menu nonsense sounds great, I ,and I am sure many of my fellow audiophiles would happily buy music only Blu-Ray discs now and wait for the upgrade for auto start. Profile 3.0 uses the existing formats, including the lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio along with uncompressed audio in stereo and multi-channel. This is a huge leap over the current Redbook CD and even DVD-A and SACD.

DVD-A and SACD have essentially killed each other off with a little help from downloadable music formats. It doesn’t take a quantum physicist to see that the public has moved towards mobile media but there is still a strong demand for solid medias. Vinyl continues to grow as a new generation becomes aware of its superior sound quality and CD sales, while slowing are still the choice for many of us.

Get it right this time and start selling the profile 3 discs now, they work just fine on any Blu-Ray player. Getting the media out there now will create an enthusiastic following, which will make the advent of profile 3.0 players a marketer’s wet dream. Give the early adaptors something special for their loyalty, bring out the profile 3.0 media today.

HDTVs are becoming a commodity again, much like the lackluster sets of the 90s, when prices fell to a level that CRT sets above 30 inches became the norm. Like then, it signals an end of an era where the quality of the picture, features and innovation stood still.

Pioneer announced last week that it will be discontinuing its line of plasma and LCD televisions and this saddens me greatly. While I was never in a position to afford one of Pioneer’s Kuro sets, they were the standard in the industry, a high standard that guaranteed the best of the best.

Television prices have fallen to the point that no company can create a great product and make money. Once again, the market has spoken and dictated that price is the only consideration. I agree that budget minded televisions are needed but companies need to set realistic prices that allow them to build quality while maintaining a reasonable profit. Yes the market has spoken loudly and it has simply repeated exactly what the electronics companies have trained us to believe, price is the end all, be all.