How much amplifier power do you really need?

[David A]

@David A Maybe you're thinking of @Confused's original post in this thread?

It also reminds me of the day at Oxford Audio, when Mathieu Pernot stated that his perfect amplifier design would have "infinite power".  This seamed slightly absurd to me at the time and I was talking to him about this later in the day.

Yes, that's where I saw the comment. Many thanks for finding it

@David A's comment in an earlier post got me doing some background reading:

It would be interesting to know how crest factor relates to the dynamic range measurement Roon uses. From reading what Roon have written about the dynamic range measurement in their user guide and other documents, it defines the range in which something like 95% of the music occurs, excluding the loudest peaks and the softest passages. It's not a measure of the range from silence to maximum peak level of the recording.

While not touching specifically on what Roon uses as an indication of dynamic range, this article from Sound on Sound has a lot of interesting observations on measures of loudness, dynamic range and crest factor, in the context of looking at the effects of the so-called "loudness war".  It's quite technical but a good read for anyone so inclined.  Incidentally it includes a range of measured crest factors for a body of 4500 music tracks which more or less agrees with the figures mentioned earlier in the thread.  (Notwithstanding @David A's observation in his recent post, this is still relevant to the topic in general.)

Interesting article. I need to spend a bit more time going over it if I'm going to get a good grasp of everything it says. You're right that it is quite technical.