Can I use av receiver 95Wx 6 ch with the max 150 watt bookshelf front speakers? Worry that av receiver has not enough power to drive the 150 watt speakers and damage them. Which combination is more safer to use- high power receiver combined with lower power speakers or low power receiver combined with high power speakers? Any inputs? Thanks.
Everything is safe as long as you are careful with the volume dial and turn it back down if you hear distorsion.
It's usually easier to hurt a speaker by overdriving an amplifier than the reverse. An overdriven amplifier clips the wave form, which generate high frequencies, and they blow the tweeter, which has the least power handling of all the drivers in the speaker.
There very little difference between 95W and 150W, and you probably shouldn't believe either of those rathings anyway.
NADMAN
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Posted on
Just like Peter said... It's usually distortion that ruins a speaker, not overpower. When the amp is driven too hard it "clips" or distorts. Wattage rating of amps and recievers are good to use as a basic frame of reference, and not much more. As far as I know, there isn't a standard that all manufacturers must rate the specs of their products the same exact way. Canadian products may have to rate them all the same way due to the NRC, but that's just my speculation. This is how some of the mass market companies, such as Sony, Pioneer, and Bose have such high and powerful ratings. Other companies, particularly higher-end companies, rate thier products with a lot higher standards, such as NAD, Rotel, and Arcam. That is why on a spec sheet, their power ratings are so low, and seem inferior (Wattage only) to these mass market products. The better companies rate their power at full band-width (or nearly the entire audible spectrum) with all channels being driven simultaneously. This is why my NAD 304 Integrated amp that I had in college (and still use in my office today) ran circles around by housemate's Kenwood reciever. My 304 is only rated at 35 watts per channel, while his Kenwood reciever was rated at 100 watts per channel. Mine played a little louder than his before it started to distort or "clip", but his would go louder after the clipping set in. This wasn't the smartest thing to test, but we did it on an old pair of speakers that we had laying around that none of us wanted to move at the end of the year.
I'm using a NAD T753 (only 70 WPC) to drive an Energy CC-3 centre channel. The CC-3 is rated at 150W. It doesn't sound quite as nice as my 120 WPC NAD amp driving my mains (Energy C-5s) but I've never had a problem with a shortage on power. And the overall sound is still wonderful. Granted I am using NAD as NADMAN says and they are very generous with their specs.
my current set-up is NAD 304, Pioneer 101 CDP and Wharfedale 9.1 bookshelf speakers. I want to get the most out of my set-up and they say that my speakers are not compatible with my NAD. Is this true? If so, what do you recommend?thanks a lot!
most NAD gear is able to handle a range of impedances (2-8 ohm speakers) with ease, so I'd say that "they" (salespeople?) are full of it.
NADMAN
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Posted on
I've owned a 304 for about 10 years, and it has handled any impedence load (4-8 ohms) I've thrown at them without problems. As long as you don't go below 4 ohms nominal impedence, you should be fine. As far as specs are concerned (wattage handling, nominal impedence, efficiency) the only real problem may be inefficient speakers. Because the 304 is only 35 watts per channel, you may want to get more efficient speakers so that the amp doesn't have to work as hard to produce higher sound levels.
I think pretty much any type of speakers other than electrostatic speakers should be fine. Elactrostatic speakers (such as Magnepan) are very inefficient and have low impedence ratings, thus making a lower powered amplifier work very hard. I haven't tried to run Maggies with my 304, but I think it would be capible of driving them. The only problem would be that the amp would most likely distort or "clip" at lower sound pressure levels. Depending on the size of your room and/or prefered listening levels, this may or may not be a problem.
NADMAN
Unregistered guest
Posted on
Sorry, I forgot to mention - the higher the sensitivity (effeciency), the louder the speaker. The lower the sensitivity, the more power you need to drive the speaker. For example, a speaker with a sensitivity rating of 95 db will play substantially louder with 20 watts of power being fed to them than a speaker with a 89 db sensitivity rating will with equal power.
If the speaker can play equally loud with less power being required, your amp doesn't have to work as hard.
PSB (which I own) and Klipsch make some very sensitive (efficient) speakers. I prefer PSB's to just about anything else of equal price, but that's just me. It shouldn't be hard at all to find a speaker that the 304 can drive without any real problems.
jag1021
Unregistered guest
Posted on
thanks for the generous advice! this is a great forum!