Multichannel Power

When Rated Power Isn’t Enough

When you buy a receiver that boasts of “100W x 7” output, why does it frequently sound so much weaker than a lesser-rated Sherbourn component?

The answer is that companies rate their multichannel power amps or receivers in different ways, and some of these mask the limitations in their products.

For instance, you may see a receiver claiming 0.05% THD (total harmonic distortion) rated at 1 watt, but they make no claim for their rated “maximum” power. Similarly, you may see a product rated for “7 x 100 watts” with no statement as to how the test was made. If you run only a single channel at a time, it might do 100 watts output, but if you run all channels at the same time, the power output drops significantly.

Sherbourn products all use overbuilt power supplies with massive toroidal transformers, together with discrete amplification and output stages that allow us to be completely honest in our ratings. That’s why you’ll see all of our products rated for THD at their maximum power, and with all channels driven. If we say our 7 x 150 watt amp delivers 7 x 150 watts at 0.05% THD, that’s exactly what it will do, with all channels running full-out, continuously, and with THD rated at the maximum output power, not at 1W.

This extreme approach to engineering and specification results in amplifiers that frequently perform at levels much higher than you’d expect, with the effortless headroom you need for dynamic music and movies. It’s one of the things that separates professional-caliber components from consumer-level products—and one of the reasons we feel confident to offer a 10-year warranty on our gear.