What does watts nominal power handling mean?

Question

Getting some new speakers soon for my truck and was not to sure what watts nominal power handling means. Hoping some one can tell me. I need 6x8's. If you have any recommendations for some good speakers that are still fairly cheap i would really appreciate. thx.

Answer 1

The nominal  power rating is also know as RMS. Here is Crutchfields explination of Nominal(RMS) and Peek ratings,this should clear it up:

The amount of continuous power, measured in watts, that an amplifier produces is called RMS power. The higher the RMS figure, the louder and cleaner your music sounds. When choosing an amplifier, the RMS rating is the power rating you should pay most attention to.

Also, keep in mind that some manufacturers calculate the RMS power ratings of their amplifiers at different input voltages. For example, an amplifier rated at 100 watts RMS at 12 volts can produce considerably more power than an amp rated at 100 watts RMS at the more typical 14.4 volts.

Stereo manufacturers often display peak power ratings on the face of their products. The peak power rating tells you the maximum wattage an amplifier can deliver as a brief burst during a musical peak, like a dramatic drum accent. The RMS figure is more significant.

Answer 2

It's what you listen to constatly or it's the rms. And here it a good pair of 6x8 for a reasonable pricehttp://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_3575...

Answer 3

it means that's the amount of power you should feed to it if u are using an amplifier....

Answer 4

Speakers actually have a very complex thermal compression relationship and certainly can not be quantified by just one or two numbers typically called RMS and Program or Peak. Because voice coils in traditional drivers are inherently resistors, any amount of voltage generates some amount of heat which then adversely changes the resistance and properties of the speaker. This is the principle of thermal compression: As the voice coil heats up, the resistance changes and the efficiency and performance of the driver decrease until the point of maximum thermal compression. There are some unique types of materials that have a close to zero temperature coefficient and of course there is also superconducting metals that operate at subzero temperatures with no indications of any sort of resistance. In theory, only these types of materials would have no thermal compression, but they are not employed or very practical yet. Copper and Aluminum are still the two most widely used materials for voice coils. Both copper and aluminum heat up considerably and the resistance changes as a function temperature, and there lies the problem, therefore a discrete RMS scalar value is entirely inappropriate.