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.