What is Dynamic Headroom? (1 Viewer)

[RobertSchaez]

I'm guessing it has something to do with an amp's ability to produce the dynamic parts of material (duh), but what, in layman's terms, is it, how is it measured, is looking at that spec a good indication of how an amp will sound (unlike watts per channel), and what is a good number?

 

[Yogi]

Dynamic headroom is the ability of an amplifier to deliver short bursts of power beyond its rated capability, expressed in db. So say an amplifier is rated to deliver 100W RMS and with a dynamic headroom of 2db can reproduce peaks of 150W for short durations. An amp with a dynamic headroom of 3db would be able to deliver 200W peaks. So the higher the dynamic headroom number the better the amp will be at reproducing transient peaks.

Hope that helps