What you heard has nothing to do with power, has to do with gain. Gain is the amount of voltage being delivered. Here is a good way to think about it. I have two water pipes, one is 1 inch in diameter and the other is 2 inches in diameter. The water in both pipes is moving at 30mph. The volume control can be though of as regulating the speed of the water and the speed of the water can be thought of as SPL. The actual force of the water moving (which would be determined by both the speed of the water and the volume of the moving water (volume as in liters) could be considered as the power. The 2 inch diameter pipe has much more power, or force, but the water is moving at the same speed (same SPL) between both.Originally Posted by audibleconnoisseur
A 50 watt receiver could have its gain set so that its volume control position at halfway equals 20 volts output. A 500 watt receiver can have its gain set so that it is delivering 10 volts at the 1/2 position of the volume control. Which receiver is going to sound louder with the volume control at halfway? The 50watt unit will. The volume control position when comparing one receiver to another is mostly meaningless.
In addition, most manufacturers use the same gain settings throughout a line of receivers... You should have heard absolutely no volume level difference between the two receivers if both controls were set at the same position, provided one was not delivering full power (which it wasn't). What you head is typical salesperson trickery to up sell you, he/she probably set the gain higher for the higher power receiver in the speaker configuration menu. You know, exactly as I explained to you before -- rather than set at 0db, probably set the speaker levels to +6dB so that you would hear a very noticeable difference between an 85 watt receiver and 100 watt receiver. Honestly, the max SPL difference between 85 watts and 100 watts is less than 1dB. Nearly impossible to hear.
Go back to the store, take the same demo, and then when the salesperson is not around, go through the setup menu of each receiver and see what the setting is for the speaker levels