Does the Wattage of Your Sound System Really Matter?

Does the Wattage of Your Sound System Really Matter?

Our rental clients are generally split pretty evenly between professionals looking to add some equipment for a specific event and the general public doing a one time thing.  One question that we get over and over again is:  “This system has 500 watts, and this other system has 600 watts, which one will right for my event?”

It sounds like an important question, one system has 20% more wattage than the other system, so it is going to be 20% louder, right?

Unfortunately, no.  The system used for amplifier rating is a logarithmic scale.  Logarithmic means (in the amplifier world) that for a double in loudness, you need to have ten times the wattage.  For our example above, we’d need a 5000 watt amplifier to be twice as loud as the 500 watt one.  A 600 watt and a 500 watt are going to sound about the same.

So to answer this common question – both of these systems will be fine for an event of around 200 people.  Don’t worry so much about the wattage, just get a quality system from a company you can trust.