Modern wireless speakers come in all shapes and sizes. Finding the right model for your application can often be difficult. There has been a flood of different names and words to describe the performance of loudspeakers. Also, each manufacturer publishes many specifications such as "sound pressure level", "dynamic range", etc. In this article, we'll take a closer look at one of the most basic of these terms: speaker output. This term is also referred to as "speaker wattage".

Some of the terms speaker manufacturers often announce are misleading and do not necessarily represent the actual performance of the speaker. Next, we'll explain the speaker's "wattage" specifications. This tactic is one of the most basic and important specifications to understand.

"Wattage" shows how loud a speaker can sound. Depending on the application, you can use a smaller speaker that can withstand only a few watts or a larger speaker that can withstand hundreds of watts. Many small home speakers can be powered with a few watts of power, which is usually sufficient for a small room. If you're planning on shaking your walls, you'll definitely want to choose a speaker that can withstand hundreds of watts. Audio distortion increases with most speakers as output power increases. So, you want to choose a speaker that has more output than you actually need. This way you won't run your speakers in areas with high distortion.

Watts are given as either "watt peak", meaning that the speaker can withstand short bursts of power at this volume, or "watt RMS", meaning how much power the speaker can withstand over a long period of time. In the past, vendors generally preferred to list "peak power". This number is greater than the average or "RMS" power. However, "peak power" is often misleading because there is no standard stating how much power a speaker must withstand.

Music and voice are not stable in terms of volume. So the peak power rating is not as important as the RMS power rating, but it is still important. Ideally, the speaker will display both RMS and maximum power ratings. A high peak power rating ensures sufficient headroom for power peaks commonly found in music signals. The main reason is that the music signal has short bursts of high power that the speaker has to process. RMS power is measured on a constant sine signal that is not compared to a music signal in terms of its power envelope.

The maximum power an amplifier can deliver to a speaker often depends on the speaker's impedance, which is typically 4-8 ohms. Due to the limited supply voltage of the amplifier, the maximum output power will be half that of connecting an 8-ohm speaker to the maximum power the amplifier can deliver to a 4-ohm speaker. Typically, maximum power is specified for a 4-ohm speaker impedance. Ideally, however, the amplifier manufacturer would specify the speaker impedance the amplifier can drive. Some amplifiers cannot drive speakers with very low speaker impedance.