Hi fu_man,
If the battery is degraded and slowly on it's way out will I get an "all or nothing" output, or a slow decline in power/ quality?
If the batteries are on their way out, their voltage will drop quickly and you'll find that you'll hit distortion (clipping) at lower volumes. If the voltage really drops low, you might even hear a high-pitch "squealing" sound as you are not running the amplifier board in its normal operating range. You won't need to turn up the volume control more if the battery voltage is running low... you'll simply hit clipping at lower volume levels.
The new Red Wine Audio units feature our SMART module and this automatically shuts off the unit and starts the charge process if the voltage were to drop too low. This way, you cannot ever damage the batteries.
I have just hooked up new super efficient speakers and I find I have to turn the Sig's up to 12'oclock to go loud - at this level they 'match' my 2 watt 45 SET at 'full' (SB3 at "40" and no pre)
... which seems to be okay except that when i had much less efficient speakers ( Visaton OB's) I didn't have to go so far up the dial?
The position on the volume control is a relative thing. For example, you can have a 2 watt amp that sounds much louder at 9 o'clock on the volume than a 1000 watt amp. The position of the volume control for a certain volume really depends on the gain/input sensitivity of the amplifer, the attenuation curve of the volume control, the output voltage of your source, the efficiency of your speakers, etc.
I hope this helps,
Vinnie
