Audio power

Audio power is the electrical power transferred from an audio amplifier to a loudspeaker, measured in watts. The electrical power delivered to the loudspeaker, together with its sensitivity, determines the sound power level generated (with the rest being converted to heat).

Amplifiers are limited in the electrical energy they can amplify, while loudspeakers are limited in the electrical energy they can convert to sound energy without distorting the audio signal or being damaged. These power ratings are important to consumers finding compatible products and comparing competitors.

Power handling

In audio electronics, there are several methods of measuring power output (for such things as amplifiers) and power handling capacity (for such things as loudspeakers). The question has engineering, regulatory (consumer protection and advertising), and psychoacoustical aspects and is, in a serious sense, much more complex than may be imagined.

Amplifiers are valued in part by their power output capacity. And in the interest of being able to advertise a higher power output number, manufacturers in the US (and elsewhere) began to take advantage of the highly variable nature of most audio signals (especially musical sources) and to cite the peak output (quite brief and rarely sustainable for long) as the amplifier power. There being no standards, imaginative approaches came to be so common that the US Federal Trade Commission intervened in the market and required all amplifier manufacturers to use an engineering based measure (root-mean square) in addition to any other value they might cite.

Watt

The watt (symbol: W) is a derived unit of power in the International System of Units (SI), named after the Scottish engineer James Watt (1736–1819). The unit is defined as joule per second and can be used to express the rate of energy conversion or transfer with respect to time. It has dimensions of L²MT⁻³.

Examples

When an object's velocity is held constant at one meter per second against constant opposing force of one newton the rate at which work is done is 1 watt.

In terms of electromagnetism, one watt is the rate at which work is done when one ampere (A) of current flows through an electrical potential difference of one volt (V).

Two additional unit conversions for watt can be found using the above equation and Ohm's Law.

Where ohm () is the SI derived unit of electrical resistance.

Watt (novel)

Watt was Samuel Beckett's second published novel in English, largely written on the run in the south of France during the Second World War and published by Maurice Girodias's Olympia Press in 1953 (an extract had been published in the Dublin literary review, Envoy, in 1950). A French translation followed in 1968.

Content

Narrated in four parts, it describes Watt's journey to, and within, Mr Knott's house; where he becomes the reclusive owner's manservant, replacing Arsene, who delivers a long valedictory monologue at the end of section one. In section two Watt struggles to make sense of life at Mr Knott's house, experiencing deep anxiety at the visit of the piano tuning Galls, father and son, and a mysteriously language-resistant pot, among other incidents. In section three, which has a narrator called Sam, Watt is in confinement, his language garbled almost beyond recognition, while the narrative veers off on fantastical tangents such as the story of Ernest Louit's account to a committee of Beckett's old university, Trinity College, Dublin of a research trip in the West of Ireland. The shorter fourth section shows Watt arriving at the railway station from which, in the novel's skewed chronology, he sets out on a journey to the institution he has already reached in section three.

Watt (surname)

The surname Watt may refer to: