Amps, Speakers & Power Ratings

[admin_exported]

I'm a simple bloke and I understand simple things (like paris hilton. err hang on. no i dont understand her. Anyway....)

Looking at amps and spesakers that supposedly go well together & I'm struggling to understand something.

I would have thought (and maybe this is where my theory lets me down) that a speaker should have a higher power rating than the amp its connected to.

For example the Pioneer LX81 outputs 190 watts, so I would have thought the speakers should be able to handle say 200 watts, or at least 190.

Reasoning being that if youn turn it up full (heaven forbid) and the amp was connected to say the tannoy revolution signature (which whsv recommends as a good partner), as the speakers have a power rating of 125 watts for front and centre and 100 for rears, wouldnt it blow the speakers? If not, why?

I'd appreciate simple answers please.

 

[pwiles1968]

It is actually the other way round, if you put a 100W speaker on a 200W amp and turn it up it would most likely be fine for short periods at least, you would also most likely be deaf.

If however you put a 100 Watt speaker on a low power amp you can get distortion and potentially clipping from the amp this is disastrous and will kill the speaker.

 

[Anonymous]

Would clipping cause the tweeter to blow completely or could it just damage it?

 

[Anonymous]

And How much extra (watt/channel) do you need to

a) safely operate

b) Get the best detail from the system

e.g for 100w speakers do you need, at least 100w (equal), or 125w (25%) 0r 150w (50%) or at least double

Cheers

S

 

[pwiles1968]

In reality a lot of speakers have reccomendations for min and max power requirement e.g. my speakers on the manufacturor specs read

Recommended Amplifier Power
50W - 120W into 8O on unclipped programme