How many watts is a channel Denon?

4 out of 5 stars

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How many watts does a channel use?
Is 75 watts per channel enough?
Is 80w per channel enough?
Is 50 watts per channel enough?

by Feb 05, 2008

Denon AVR 2801 5.1 channel 540 Watt Receiver

I bought this receiver through an ebay auction for about $160 and had to pay an extra $70 for shipping charges so overall I got it for about $230 and it is with no doubt worth every penny! It is an older receiver (I think it came out about 1996 or 1997) but you would never guess it from listening to it. I have a Bose VCS-10 center channel, a pair of older Cerwin Vega floorstanding behemoth's (15" woofer, two 4" mids, and a tweeter in each) for my front left and right channels, a pair of Bose 201 Series IV Direct/Reflecting speakers for my rear left and right surround channels (these are bookshelf speakers and not optimal for surround channels but I purchased them thinking they would be a better match for the huge Cerwin Vega's than tiny satellite speakers), and to close it out a 10" Infinity down-firing powered subwoofer. I have ran this same system with three other receiver's: two Pioneers, and one Sony. One of the Pioneers would push this setup to a decent volume and then start to distort, and the other Pioneer and the Sony would go to about the same level and then overload and shut off. Personally, I LOVE loud music with clean bass and clear highs. If it is loud but of poor quality you may as well be listening to static on the radio in my opinion. The first Pioneer got me the volume but not the clarity, and the other Pioneer and Sony were total flops. I was skeptical buying a receiver that was 10-12 years old but I'm glad I took a chance on it. The Denon is in a single word AMAZING! It powers my oddball setup like a dream. I wondered if I was ever going to be able to find a receiver under $500 that would power the huge Cerwin Vega's I own the way they deserve to be powered. Well, I found it in the Denon for $230. I'm not gonna go through all the technical specs you could get off an official website but I'll touch on a few likes and dislikes. Dislikes - due to its age it of course doesn't have HDMI capabilities, and the only other complaint (not that the first one is valid knowing the receiver was built before HDMI hit the market) is the size of the remote, it's HUGE. However, I'm told this is Denon's style for remotes, maybe they're trying to make a statement like "you think our remote's are big, check out the sound." Now for the likes - the sound is extremely loud and clear, I must repeat extremely!, the DSP Simulation modes are the best I've heard (other receivers rock and concert modes just sound like an echo with no benefit but the Denon's modes actually shocked me, the ROCK ARENA, and JAZZ CLUB really live up to their names especially if the music itself is live or acoustic), 5 channel stereo (two of the three previous receivers I owned didn't have 5 channel stereo), A, B, and A+B speaker zones allow you to hook up a pair of speakers in another room or outside, and last of all, though I complained about it in the dislikes, the huge remote has a retro look that has grown on me and a newer sleek looking remote would be a disappointment after owning the Denon. You can't go wrong with the Denon AVR 2801.Read full review

aWESOME RECEIVER DENON IS THE BEST!!!

IN RECEIVERS DENON IS THE BEST!!! THE MOST TRUSTED IN THE INDUSTRY AND RELIABLE RECEIVERS AROUND. cHECK OUT THEIR REVIEWS ON THE WEB.

I have a detailed spreadsheet system power calculator but I'm now finding basic rules of thumb work well for most situations.

There are three components to it:

1. Speaker sensitivity i.e. the SPL that 1W of power (2.83V into 8-Ohms) gives you at a 1M distance

2. Amplifier power gain - the dB gain you will get from the lowest maximum amount of wattage that could be made available to drive that speaker at any point. Using a 5-channel driven test figure is a useful worst case scenario as in practice no more than the equivalent of 4 channels are driven fully at any one point due to surrounds have combined maximum total SPL output of one LCR channel. The dB gain = 10 x LOG (Number of Watts available). Your X4400 will get you about 19dB.

3. The SPL loss between 1M and the MLP due to dispersion. This is 5-7dB in most rooms at typical seating distances.

The maths of THX Ultra certified systems for the LCRs look like this.

They take an 89dB+ sensitivity twin woofer speaker and feed it 100W of clean power which gets it to 109dB. If you're using an D&M AVR, you would need a Denon X6700/X8500/SR8015 to do this. They then take away 6dB for maximum dispersion loss from LCRs to MLP in a 3,000Ft3 room to get 103dB. 103dB is actually true cinema reference - apparently Dolby measured it incorrectly 2dB higher when they came up with it.

Note that this is on a conservative continuous RMS power basis - peak power output would be 3dB higher and, due to capacitance, short term bursts have even more power.

All THX rated LCR speakers seem to have twin woofers that are at least 6.5". Presumably these are to cover the most demanding first octave as it gives them 3dB more sensitivity there. I don't think 100W fed into a bookshelf speaker would work for the bass no matter what the sensitivity rating says as they're usually an average from say 300-3,000Hz.

Obviously if you have a power amp with 200W of clean power available and your speakers can handle it then you could drop back the sensitivity requirement by up to 3dB and still get the same result but that's a harder, hotter and more expensive way to do it.

If you're listening at -12dB on a system like this then you would need only 10W of power per channel which is why AVRs work extremely well for most people that use sensitive speakers in normal sized rooms. This is exactly what I do with 89-90dB twin woofer speakers up front and a beefy 140W/channel AVR.

How many watts does a channel use?

Watts Per Channel Power output figures for home theater amplifiers can range from around 20 watts to 200 watts per channel. The greater the power rating, the louder the amplifier will be.

Is 75 watts per channel enough?

Amount of power: 50-100 watts per channel (RMS) should allow plenty of volume for a reasonable room size for most home theater systems.

Is 80w per channel enough?

80 watts of power is more than enough for most applications. But the real #'s that count are the sensitivity of your speakers and the powerband of the amp. If you speakers have a sensitivity of 88db they will sound half as loud as speakers with a 91db sensitivity.