On 24 Nov 2004 23:56:20 GMT, John Phillips
wrote:

In article , Tat Chan wrote:
JustMe wrote:
"Stewart Pinkerton" wrote in message
...
And Jim's research did indeed lead staright to
what's wrong with the Kraken - appalling current delivery! Into 4
ohms, it can only put out the voltage equivalent of 18 watts into 8
ohms. You just *know* that's going to be audible on peaks...........

In this particular setup (by my PC) it remains at a comparitively low
volume - I doubt I take it to anywhere near a level at which it'll clip,
even with variances from the speakers.

Again you say "what's wrong with the Kraken".

1) Do you know that this isn't by design?

(And I'm not asking for what *you* consider to be good design in an
amplifier, just whether you *know* if this is by design or not).

Excuse me for jumping in, but going back to Jim's finding that,
"although measured to deliver 50W into 8 Ohm loads, this fell to 36W
into 4 Ohm loads", wouldn't this mean the amp was improperly specced or
designed? I am under the impression that most amps would deliver more
power (not necessarily double) into a 4 Ohm load than an 8 Ohm load.

I guess it depends on your standards and how you look at things.

An "18 Watt/8 Ohm" amplifier which also drives 36 Watts into 4 Ohms
would achieve the usual modern standard [1]. Thus the Kraken could
be considered to be perfectly well designed to provide 18 Watts
into a nominally 6 Ohm loudspeaker (i.e. one with an impedance of 4
Ohms minimum).

It just wouldn't get the "50 Watt" label. However, that may be fine.
If the loudspeaker had a sensitivity of, say, = 93 dB at 1 metre for
a nominal 8 Ohm Watt then you could still get unclipped peak levels of
around 105 dB from an "18 Watt" amplifier - which would be fine for a
very reasonable range of music.

[1] Some amplifiers exceed this. The older Krells, for example, continue
doubling output power down to to 2 Ohms or even lower.

On a point of information, Krells before the KAV series were always
specified as doubling rated power right down to 1 ohm. This isn't
repealing the laws of physics however, as my '50 watt' KSA-50 mk II
actually puts out 105 watts into 8 ohms, 195 watts into 4 ohms, and
does indeed drive 440 watts continuously into a 1 ohm load.
--

Stewart Pinkerton | Music is Art - Audio is Engineering