Quote:
Originally Posted by VaSteve
Do amp wattages correspond in any way to car speakers? I recall buying 50w speakers in the day for my car and "high power" head units but never really understood it all. How's it relate?
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IIRC, a decibel is defined as the sound level produced by 1 watt of power at 1 meter. Most guitar amp speakers have a "sensitivity" of around 96 to 100 dB, so that means that they produce 96 to 100 decibels of sound
per watt of input power.
So...it becomes obvious really quickly that it doesn't take a lot of power input to create a lot of decibel output. Many people are concerned with keeping the guitar sound clean at higher volumes, so that requires a decent amount of wattage. Basically, though, 10 watts can be really, really loud. Also, it takes 10 times the power input to double the volume output, so a 100 watt amp isn't 10 times louder than a 10 watt amp - it's only twice as loud.
Car speakers are generally rated as "power handling capability", which has nothing to do with how loud they are.
All the above is from memory which is probably wrong/urban legends, so feel to correct any errors.