Measure power from reciever. (1 Viewer)

[ChrisLazarko]

I would like to test the power going from an older Sony reciever piece of junk I use to see if it can possibly be used as an amp... no specs on it and I can't find any and I do have a volt meter so does anyone know which setting I put this to so I can get how many watts is getting pushed out of it?

 

[Chu Gai]

try searching the newsgroups

 

[John S]

I am new here, but I don't think you can really do it with a simple VOM... A real music wattage meter would be best.

What is the model number and vintage?
Does it indicate how much power it max draws from the AC power source? If you simply half it you should be close to some sort of max RMS rating on the power amp section, but certainly would only be an approximation.

If the amp sounds good and clean, heck, just try it.
(knowing from my system, that this is no easy task)

I want to simply change out my laser disc player and in thinking about what this will entail, it is a days work, and two days work if I want to improve the placement of my audio components in the rack, (actually I want to eliminate the rack completely)

 

[ChrisLazarko]

Hmm I got it... finally figured it out... wasn't really that hard, just getting the readings to stay still were the difficult parts.

 

[Brad_Harper]

You need to own a true RMS voltmeter. If you do own a RMS meter simply put the meter into voltage mode and set it to measure peak values. Measure the voltage across you speaker terminals. You should have a peak RMS voltage displayed on your meter. Now take that value and use this formula. Wattage = (Voltage^2)/R [^2 is squared and R is the speaker resistance]. This will give you the peak RMS wattage that your receiver was putting out during that particular music selection. This is probably the easiest way.

If you have an oscilloscope you can view the wavefrom and calculate power based on that.

 

[John S]

Well do tell?? how did the old Sony check out????

Curiuos minds want to know here... lol