Optimistic speaker ratings!.

[Nigel Goodwin]

I've made my feelings about in-car and computer speaker ratigns fairly plain, but this is from a Maplin advert I just received - is this the most exaggerated one yet?.

360W Flat Panel PC Speakers
Only £12.99 Save £7.00 
• Stylish flat panel design 
• 360W PMPO (7.2W RMS)
• Frequency response - 80Hz to 20,000Hz

 

[zevon8]

LOL, funny how they included the RMS rating in the listing. Pretty much negated thier own previous numbers.

Anyone who believes the Wattage rating seen on many car amps / speakers should look through a catalog of a professional PA equipment maker and see what an amplifier that is really capable of 1000 Watts continous looks like ( and costs )

One of my co-workers has a small portable radio ( single 3" speaker ) that proudly claims 240 Watts on a sticker on the front. The thing runs on 4 "C" size batteries.

 

[tansis]

Found a corker on maplin the other day...
Search the stock for "30w amp"

and read the blurb for these two kits based on the same ic
N09AA 2 x 30W Audio Amp £19.99
VF53H Velleman Kit K4003 £14.99

Maplin has sunk to new depths charging a fiver to assemble
such simple kits

 

[Pyroandrew]

That PMPO is another one of those unstandardised ways of quoting the power output. The thing is that the public at large just DON'T understand and so are happy to be bombarded with crap concocted by "marketing folk". If they added a real frequency response graph at full power even an idiot would not buy them. The PC processor market is becomming a bit like tis as well. AMD processors are now marketed as an equivilant speed of a pentium processor.

 

[audioguru]

Pentium computers don't even show their speed anymore. Just Hyper-threading and the part number of their chipset.

That crappy little 7.2W RMS speaker obviously doesn't have a magnet big enough to make a projectile out of its voice-coil when it is fed Peak Music Power that is exactly 50 times its RMS rating. If it could last longer than 1ms, just think about how distorted it would sound.

Even IC amplifier makers compete with inflated power numbers.
With a 2 ohm load, a 14.4V car battery and at horrible-sounding 10% distortion. :lol:

 

[Sebi]

Two explain of PMPOreposterously Misleading Power Overrating and Pretty Meaningless Power Output...

 

[Morgen]

The other ad copy that bothers me to no end is speakers proclaimed as "digital ready." Radio Shack for one has gotten a lot of mileage out of that nonsense.

 

[spuffock]

Ive seen computer speakers, 390 watts pmpo, with a little chip in that would give 500mW at square output.
Anyone go better?

 

[Pyroandrew]

Two explain of PMPOreposterously Misleading Power Overrating and Pretty Meaningless Power Output...

:lol:

"digital ready", that takes the piss, is meant to mean it can play pink noise with no distortion? Or you can feed it a serial stream of digital data? think not!!! I think these companies should be taken to court and have their arses fined to hell under the trades description act.

You would not get away with saying that a bottle of ribena cordial is capable of turning an Olympic swimming pool into nice drink. Or saying that one bottle of wine will get the whole of the wedding reception plastered!

It's funny how mugish the public is.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

"digital ready", that takes the piss, is meant to mean it can play pink noise with no distortion? Or you can feed it a serial stream of digital data? think not!!! I think these companies should be taken to court and have their arses fined to hell under the trades description act.

They are not misrepresenting anything! - a 'digital ready' speaker is pretty meaningless, ALL speakers are 'digital ready' - a CD player is digital, and the speaker can play music from a CD player.

You would not get away with saying that a bottle of ribena cordial is capable of turning an Olympic swimming pool into nice drink. Or saying that one bottle of wine will get the whole of the wedding reception plastered!

It's funny how mugish the public is.

It's all buzz words!, 'digital' is popular at the moment - the so called 'improvements' of digital TV are a load of rubbish as well. Digital TV is all about being far cheaper for the broadcaster, the actual quality is less than that of analogue broadcasting (assuming good reception).