Ash
Gotcha - but this isn't nearly what you think it is. You can see it clearly in the waveforms.
Look, every amplifier has a pre-amp that attenuates the signal to the main power amp.
If you have very peaky program material then you can adjust your gain until you see the peaks are just below clipping at, say, 250W peak. Whatever these peaks are. Drums. Horns. Hammers. Whatever. You can use a scope and adjust the gain easily to make full use of the amplifier.
Now you will notice that the pre-amp gain is up VERY high. VERY VERY high. If you have really quiet passages and you have a good and quiet amp then yes, the quiet passages will be quiet and the peaks will be 250W. And the pre-amp gain will be very high.
However, if now play something else like Me, Myself I and you turn down the pre-amp gain to a comfortable level then you are NOT going to see any 250W peaks. In fact the peaks will be attenuated by the same amount as the pre-amp gain is attenuated. This is busy music that has a relatively low peak to average content - compared to an orchestra that is.
This concept of listening at a low level (pre-amp gain down) to something like Me Myself I and somehow the amp needs to produce large peaks is completely beyond me. The orchestra's are the greatest example of dynamic range and it's why you need to listen to an orchestra at very high pre-amp gain! Your preamp setting effectively regulates the peak power the amp will EVER produce under any circumstance.
This is the best way to describe it:
If I've got my gain down on my AMP to, say, below a still loud 60 (it goes 0-75 - I normally listen at 45 or 50) I CAN NOT create ANY waveform on the digital input that will EVER result in a 200W peak. The gain needs to be way up to generate large peak powers.
I can also show you this on my ADM9. Give me a track to play. Give me a reference gain setting that's 1/3 max volume or something (say a certain voltage amplitude on the woofer at 1kHz driven by a full-16bit range .WAV sinusoid). I can show you exactly the instantaneous power waveform. Unless I have the pre-amp volume WAY up I am never going to come close to seeing 250W peaks or even 125W peaks. It just doesn't work this way. Unless I have a huge amplitude input signal and with digital sources this is TOTALLY limited. Like I said, it's all in the original waveform. All these fast peaks where you need 10s or 100s of watts to support when listening at low levels simply don't exist in the original content!!! It's right there (or not there) in the .wav file info.
I really don't know where this thinking comes from.....
Anyway, I need to understand it do move forward with the analysis of my design.