Car Deck 50Watt x 4 What does it indicate ?

Car Deck 50Watt x 4 | What does it mean ?

I installed Pioneer Car deck which has 50W x 4 Channel output.
With Rear speakers of 470W & Front speakers of 25W each.

Retailer showed me 470Watt and 400Watt speakers saying that 470Watt would also give a decent bass (Inbuild in speaker) but better than 400Watt's speaker.

My question is how would it give me better result when car deck is giving 50Watt output only & Speaker will not be driven to its max level ever, so, I think 400Watt and 470Watt should give the same result cause maximum power deck can provide is 50Watt only and no speaker can be driven to its optimum level to test its max ouput it will always be less than OR equal to 50Watt .. am I right ? If Im wrong Please correct me.

Well, first of all, you were talking to a SALESMAN. Bottom line: A crappy 470W speaker won't sound as good as a good 100W one. The quality of the speaker is more important than excess power handling.

Re: Car Deck 50Watt x 4 | What does it mean ?

roxy1001 said:

Retailer showed me 470Watt and 400Watt speakers...

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The power rating only tells you how much power you can put into the speaker without damaging it. It doesn't tell anything about the quality of sound, the bass response, or even how loud it will play.

Sensitivity is a more useful specification. It tells how loud a speaker will play for a given amount of input power, and is normally quoted in decibells at 1m distance with 1Watt input. Speakers can vary by 10dB or more in their sensitivity, which means that to play at the same volume level, some speakers will need 10 times as much power as others. Similarly, some speakers will play significantly louder than others, given the same amplifier power.

Unfortunately, that doesn't tell you how good the bass is either, since the quoted sensitivity is normally an average value. So a speaker may have very high sensitivity in the midrange, but a lousy bass response.

barry said:

Well, first of all, you were talking to a SALESMAN. Bottom line: A crappy 470W speaker won't sound as good as a good 100W one. The quality of the speaker is more important than excess power handling.

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Thanks for the reply.

Yes ! Quality I know that...
sorry I didn't understand this

A crappy 470W speaker won't sound as good as a good 100W one

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My question is if I tie same quality speakers of different wattage (470Watt /400Watt) to 50Watt output channel what difference can be seen ?

OR may be it would never be driven to 470Watts anyway until I use amplifier to boost the power output from deck so does it really make difference using 400watt or 470watt speakers on 50 Watt output?

roxy1001 said:

...so does it really make difference using 400watt or 470watt speakers on 50 Watt output?

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Yes. Different speakers will perform differently, but the difference has nothing to do with the power rating.

Sensitivity, frequency response and maximum displacement would be more useful indicators. Or just listen to them and see which sounds best.

You might be getting caught in power rating game. Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_power and https://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/PMPO.html

The figures of 400W and 470W sound [pun intended] bogus. Any decent speaker comes with power in RMS, efficiency, and frequency curve

470W is puny. Here's one that takes 6000W RMS. :shock: Of course it takes a pickup truck to carry it (and about 1/3 the cost of that pickup to buy).