Quote:
Originally Posted by ddouglass
As far as blowing speakers go as long as your speakers are rated for a highter wattage than your amp can put out then you won't blow a speaker. It is usually people who use undersized speakers who have this problem.
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I have to disagree to a point with this one, while yes you can certainly blow a speaker if the amp is way too powerful for the recommended specs of the speakers, but you can blow a speaker faster with an amp that isn't powerful enough in the first place. An amp should be able to deliver the twice (some engineers & books even recommend 3 x) the RMS power rating. Most speaker manus already add this rating as the 'program' rating. Say for example the Yamaha S115V, it's RMS/PROGRAM/PEAK ratings are 250/500/1000 at 8 ohms. The amp should be pushing at least 500 watts.
I have seen companies blow drivers - mostly high frequency - due to too little power, which seems to be the trend in a lot of companies these days. They see that 250 watt rating and think they can get that or lower & nver blow the amp, truth is, distortion is what is going to kill the speaker, not so much power. While a smaller amp is certainly more than capable of running a show, it may not be doing it with any headroom. The smaller amps once it hits it's rated power, everything over that is going to come in the form of distortion, sometimes not even really audible at first, but the speakers can sure feel it as the voice coils start to heat up. Plus once the amp gets over it's rating, it starts getting almost ear piercingly loud, low frequencies start dropping - typical of MANY shows around here.
If that same system was running with a higher powered amp, the volume at regular listening levels would be much cleaner to start with plus have the headroom to be able to turn up to compensate for crowd noise without the distortion. Now on the flipside, TOO much power can pop a speaker as it will sound pretty good up until speaker failure.