Stupid Speaker Question - Can I damage my B&W 600 S3s?
Speaker Dummy
Posted on
I recently put a pair of B&W DM600 S3 bookshelf speakers on a 20 year old Sony integrated amp/tuner. I don't know how much power the Sony system generates. The original speakers that came with the Sony were huge towers rated at 225 watts/8 ohms.
The B&W 600s sound fantanstic with the volume turned up half way...very loud with no distortion or poping, but the speaker's kevlar mid-range driver is violently jumping out of the speaker to keep up!...I'm afraid to turn it up any louder. It sounds great but looks like I'm pushing the speaker's limits.
It's hard for me to judge "jumping out of the speaker". People tend to get nervous if their amplifier has too much power, but realistically it's easier to blow up speakers with an UNDERpowered amplifier. Most speakers will take lots of clean power. However, woofers (low frequencies) require most of the power). When you try to play music loud with an underpowered amp the amp will clip (cut off the top and bottom of the waveform). This causes a high freq spike. So all your power that was supposed to go to the woofer is now being fed to the tweeters which can't handle a lot of power. So if you have a decent amount of power I would suggest that you go by your ears. If it sounds like it's distorting, 'turn it down'. Otherwise you should be fine.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer or an audio engineer. This is just my opinion. So PLEASE don't crank it way up and blame me if something bad happens. Perhaps you can speak to the shop that sold you the speakers
Jedd
Posted on
I was always told that turning the amp past half on the volume dial is the point where the amp is no longer providing clean power and starts adding distortion.
Is there any truth to this? My roomate blew my klipsch doing it, so I am a believer.