500Watt Speakers On A 80Watt Receiver

[smithaaron]

This question has probably been asked many times before although I cant seen to find the right post.

Any way I have a very small budget compared to you guys because well I don’t have a very big income basically and I plan to start off with relatively cheaper components.

What I want to do is buy a Pioneer VSX-D14S $306 or the VSX-512S $255 (link below)

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_overview.jsp?category_id=405&taxonomy_id=62-98

I know they are probably not the best receivers but anyway I also plan on buying a pair of Eltax 500 millennium speakers, they are 250 per channel, that’s 500watts in total. $247 (link below)

http://www.qed-uk.com/?i=10Rpbo2V4WRu&vp=6&bg=216&bp=m5006&bi=0


Now if I attach these to the receiver will my amp over heat, or will by speakers end there life as soon as they begun? Because the amp is only 80watt per channel, is it okay to attach these speakers to 2 channels or do I have to connect the two speakers to multiple speaker outlets to power them? (5.1 receiver).

 

[markw]

Just because a speaker says it can absorb 500 watts does not mean that you must feed it 500 watts.

If they play loud enough without distorting, then you are home free. If the sound starts to distort, turn it down immediately, before something blows.

Remember, just because the speakers say they can absorb a ceertain number of watts, it does not state that it will be clean sound. It simply means that they won't blow out under normal circumstances. They may sound like the 9th level of hell at that point, but they might still not fry.

Curiously, I did not see an efficiency or sensitivity level mentioned for the speakers. Likewise, I didn't even check out the power ratings of that amp either. Mebbe I'm lazy, but here's a little something to chew on to help make up for that personal shortcoming. ... a lesson in amp power and how it relates to speaker sensitivity.

If one speaker has a sensitivity rating of 3 decibles highger than another, it will take one half the amplifier power to drive it to the same level as the lsecond one.

IOW, a speaker with a sensitivity rating of 90 decibels being driven by a 100 watt amp will be just as loud as a speaker with a 93 decibel rating being driven by a 50 watt amp.

...just a little something to think about when surfing the catalogs.

 

[smithaaron]

thanks for the reply you cleared up my problem

cheers

 

[annunaki]

If those speakers handle 250 watts continuous power, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to have a voice coil failure with that receiver. Distortion does not blow speakers. Too much power over time does. I have posted this MANY time now do a search on my posts to see a full explanation.

 

[80'sPolk]

"Distortion does not blow speakers. Too much power over time does."

annunaki, with respect to you I would like to add to and somewhat correct your above statement.

An amps Watts per channel rating is the amps ability to cleanly control the electrical flow from the outlet it is connected to at an RMS rating with all channels driven if it is a TRUE rating. A regular analogue volume knob at the 2 o'clock position is running the amp to its max. When the knob goes past the 2 o'clock position the amp loses its ability to properly control the flow of current from the outlet and begins to dump the uncontrolled current into the speakers running distortion through them. Regardless of the amps size the 2 o'clock rule applies to large and small amps. It is a common misconception that overpowering speakers is worse than underpowering them. When you run speakers on an underpowered amp and turn it past the 2 o'clock position it runs uncontrolled current which is PURE distortion through the speakers. This is more harmful than overpowering the speaker. Some speaker ratings are continuous and some are MAX. Some cheap speakers with the max rating can only handle the MAX rating for a VERY short amount of time. I also forgot to mention that since underpowering a speaker is worse that overpowering it, It goes without saying that under powering it could burn it out faster than overpowering it. Yes, I do agree overpowering it burns it out over time.

 

[highfigh]

If those speakers handle 250 watts continuous power, it would be IMPOSSIBLE to have a voice coil failure with that receiver. Distortion does not blow speakers. Too much power over time does. I have posted this MANY time now do a search on my posts to see a full explanation.

Distortion absolutely does cook voice coils. Almost all tweeter failures are due to clipping. Clipping produces frequencies in a range where the driver can't operate and the energy is converted to heat. Hot coil = dead speaker. I don't know how many customers came into the stores where I worked, with hands full of dead drivers that met their maker during a party when they were run on low powered receivers and amps. Look at a voice coil that cooked from excessive power and it'll have scrapes, stretched winding, etc and on a coil that cooked from high distortion, it's usually striped. Also, the higher the frequencies produced, the more they resemble DC or square wave (clipped waveform with very steep sides and very short uration). Square wave will pass through a cap or inductor, and since a woofer's crossover won't block DC, it subject to a lot of abuse. Clean high power is more likely to kill a woofer, so if that's what you meant, I tend to agree but as a global term, 'impossible to have a voice coil failure" is not correct.

Most amps will lose their damping ability under heavy load/distortion and this can make the speaker subject to over-excursion but voice coils definitely do die from low power and heavy distortion. If you get the chance, touch the magnet on a speaker in a guitar amp after the guy has been cranking it for only a short time.

 

[highfigh]

This question has probably been asked many times before although I cant seen to find the right post.

Any way I have a very small budget compared to you guys because well I don’t have a very big income basically and I plan to start off with relatively cheaper components.

What I want to do is buy a Pioneer VSX-D14S $306 or the VSX-512S $255 (link below)

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_overview.jsp?category_id=405&taxonomy_id=62-98

I know they are probably not the best receivers but anyway I also plan on buying a pair of Eltax 500 millennium speakers, they are 250 per channel, that’s 500watts in total. $247 (link below)

http://www.qed-uk.com/?i=10Rpbo2V4WRu&vp=6&bg=216&bp=m5006&bi=0


Now if I attach these to the receiver will my amp over heat, or will by speakers end there life as soon as they begun? Because the amp is only 80watt per channel, is it okay to attach these speakers to 2 channels or do I have to connect the two speakers to multiple speaker outlets to power them? (5.1 receiver).

As long as the amp is running in it's "happy place", you should be fine. If you push the amp really hard, it will get hot, regardless of the speakers but if the speakers present difficult loads, the amp will have problems if it's not designed to handle them.

Each channel has its own output devices, so connecting one speaker to two channels may not be a good thing for the amp. Separate power amps are often able to run in "bridged" mode, and you would need to invert the input to one channel for that to work unless the amp has a switch for achieving the same thing.

 

[TLS Guy]

Distortion absolutely does cook voice coils. Almost all tweeter failures are due to clipping. Clipping produces frequencies in a range where the driver can't operate and the energy is converted to heat. Hot coil = dead speaker. I don't know how many customers came into the stores where I worked, with hands full of dead drivers that met their maker during a party when they were run on low powered receivers and amps. Look at a voice coil that cooked from excessive power and it'll have scrapes, stretched winding, etc and on a coil that cooked from high distortion, it's usually striped. Also, the higher the frequencies produced, the more they resemble DC or square wave (clipped waveform with very steep sides and very short uration). Square wave will pass through a cap or inductor, and since a woofer's crossover won't block DC, it subject to a lot of abuse. Clean high power is more likely to kill a woofer, so if that's what you meant, I tend to agree but as a global term, 'impossible to have a voice coil failure" is not correct.

Most amps will lose their damping ability under heavy load/distortion and this can make the speaker subject to over-excursion but voice coils definitely do die from low power and heavy distortion. If you get the chance, touch the magnet on a speaker in a guitar amp after the guy has been cranking it for only a short time.

Drivel!

Annunaki is right!

Far more often than not it too much power that cooks voice coils.

Now if you drive an amp into distortion there will be harmonic products of the fundamental. So yes, there will be excess HF energy due to the distortion products. However these days with ferrofluid in the tweeter magnetic gaps this is unusual. Before ferrofluid, tweeter failure due to this problem was not unusual. I have not seen a case for a long time, except in cases of poor design, due to too low a crossover and or too low an order high pass filter.

Now as to DC offset, when amps are driven into clipping. Only poor amplifiers produce DC offset when driven into clipping. In any event, all good amplifiers have circuits to prevent DC offset getting to the speakers.

Back in the 70s with the introduction of DC coupled amps, there were frequent cases of amps producing DC offset and blowing speakers. The Crown DC 330A was a particularly frequent culprit. However, all this is now history, but the legend persists.

What I do know is that with amplifier powers going up, cooking woofers and especially mid range drivers, in speakers that have them, is an increasing problem.

So Annunaki is right, these days there are far more speakers taken out by over powering, than under powering.

Now to the OP's question, from the look of the gear on offer on that site, I would think the voice coil of any woofer on anything they have on offer, would melt or catch fire long before reaching 500 watts input power.

What ever you do, DO NOT connect amplifier channels together. If you do, your new receiver will be for ever destroyed in microseconds.

 

[Haoleb]

A regular analogue volume knob at the 2 o'clock position is running the amp to its max. When the knob goes past the 2 o'clock position the amp loses its ability to properly control the flow of current from the outlet and begins to dump the uncontrolled current into the speakers running distortion through them. Regardless of the amps size the 2 o'clock rule applies to large and small amps.

Just to clear this up a bit, While this may be sort of true in a roundabout way when driven by an average cd player or line level source, The volume knob doesnt directly correlate to an amplifiers reserve or power in any way whatsoever, Its all dependent on the level of the source output thats being fed into an amplifier.

I just dont want people getting the idea that turning the knob past 2 will wreak havoc as this is not the case. And if using seperates it also depends on the preamp's output vs what is needed to drive any particular amplifier to its full power. Often times a preamp's maximum output capability far exceeds what is needed to drive a power amp to its maximum power but even this is not of much concern because it all depends on the source output.

 

[highfigh]

Drivel!

Annunaki is right!

Far more often than not it too much power that cooks voice coils.

Now if you drive an amp into distortion there will be harmonic products of the fundamental. So yes, there will be excess HF energy due to the distortion products. However these days with ferrofluid in the tweeter magnetic gaps this is unusual. Before ferrofluid, tweeter failure due to this problem was not unusual. I have not seen a case for a long time, except in cases of poor design, due to too low a crossover and or too low an order high pass filter.

Now as to DC offset, when amps are driven into clipping. Only poor amplifiers produce DC offset when driven into clipping. In any event, all good amplifiers have circuits to prevent DC offset getting to the speakers.

Back in the 70s with the introduction of DC coupled amps, there were frequent cases of amps producing DC offset and blowing speakers. The Crown DC 330A was a particularly frequent culprit. However, all this is now history, but the legend persists.

What I do know is that with amplifier powers going up, cooking woofers and especially mid range drivers, in speakers that have them, is an increasing problem.

So Annunaki is right, these days there are far more speakers taken out by over powering, than under powering.

Now to the OP's question, from the look of the gear on offer on that site, I would think the voice coil of any woofer on anything they have on offer, would melt or catch fire long before reaching 500 watts input power.

What ever you do, DO NOT connect amplifier channels together. If you do, your new receiver will be for ever destroyed in microseconds.

I was arguing against him saying that it's impossible and we both came up with very similar examples of how it can still happen.

Bottom line- keep the amp running clean and don't try to get by with speakers that aren't made for high power use, if that's how they will be run. Don't jack up all of the bands on a graphic EQ so they're all at +12 (or whatever the max is) and don't get creative when connecting the speakers to the receiver/amp. If I'm wrong, I must not have learned anything from my 30 years in consumer electronics.

 

[TLS Guy]

I was arguing against him saying that it's impossible and we both came up with very similar examples of how it can still happen.

Bottom line- keep the amp running clean and don't try to get by with speakers that aren't made for high power use, if that's how they will be run. Don't jack up all of the bands on a graphic EQ so they're all at +12 (or whatever the max is) and don't get creative when connecting the speakers to the receiver/amp. If I'm wrong, I must not have learned anything from my 30 years in consumer electronics.

Yes but, unless you are using 70s gear, you are very unlikely indeed to fry a speaker by under powering. The woofer coil will be fried before a modern tweeter fails, unless they is an improperly designed crossover, or a lot of HF boost added.

NO modern amp is going to dump current into a woofer, when driven into clipping, and if it did the protection circuits to protects speakers from DC off set would immediately activate.

There is however one amp talked about and owned by some members of the forum, and that is the Acurus. Those amps have no protection circuit for DC off set and are potential speaker killers.

 

[bandphan]

I was arguing against him saying that it's impossible and we both came up with very similar examples of how it can still happen.

Bottom line- keep the amp running clean and don't try to get by with speakers that aren't made for high power use, if that's how they will be run. Don't jack up all of the bands on a graphic EQ so they're all at +12 (or whatever the max is) and don't get creative when connecting the speakers to the receiver/amp. If I'm wrong, I must not have learned anything from my 30 years in consumer electronics.

Could you explain the above again, Im a little behind

 

[highfigh]

Could you explain the above again, Im a little behind

By "running clean", I mean not in the range that produces distortion- clean signal. It's much more rare to see an equalizer in a system these days but many receivers have a way to adjust the equalizer manually. Raising the control for each band can easily cause the amp to distort and an equalizer can be set so there's little or no net volume gain.

By "don't get creative when connecting the speakers", I was referring to the comment from the original poster about connecting one speaker to two channels on the receiver to get more power. This doesn't work.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

[highfigh]

Yes but, unless you are using 70s gear, you are very unlikely indeed to fry a speaker by under powering. The woofer coil will be fried before a modern tweeter fails, unless they is an improperly designed crossover, or a lot of HF boost added.

NO modern amp is going to dump current into a woofer, when driven into clipping, and if it did the protection circuits to protects speakers from DC off set would immediately activate.

There is however one amp talked about and owned by some members of the forum, and that is the Acurus. Those amps have no protection circuit for DC off set and are potential speaker killers.

This is generally true but I don't think it should be assumed that everyone is using new equipment when there's a lot of great old gear out there and still working fine, including speakers. Ferro-fluid isn't that new but I have seen speakers that that damaged, anyway.

They definitely have done some good things with protection circuits but when the definition of the perfect amp is "straight wire with gain" and many companies trying to use as few components in the signal path, there's always some fringe amp builder whose designs sound great but speaker protection is the last thing they care about.

My time in the business has taught me one thing- "Murphy was an optimist", usually called "O'Toole's Corollary to Murphy's Law". If the right combination of circumstances are brought together, something is gonna start smoking. Ever seen a car speaker that the customer "tested" by connecting it to a car battery?

 

[annunaki]

I didn't even know this thread was still going.

Obviously no one bothered looking up any past threads on this topic.

When an amplifier begins to clip, it's output power raises rapidly. A fully clipped amplifier will typically double it's rated output power at .1% thd.

That being said, a 100 watt speaker can burn up off of an 80 watt amplifier as the amplifier can deliver in upwards of 160watts when fully clipped.

If a speaker is rated for 500 watts rms power handling, an 80 watt amplifier (80 watts rms from 20hz-20khz @ .1% thd at 8 ohm), even when fully clipped should not cause any damage to the speaker, unless of course the power ratings were not correct to begin with Sure, it will sound horrible, but their should be no ill affect on the speaker. Distortion in and of itself does not fry speakers. It is the added power the amplifier produces while clipping that fry's speakers.

The reason people fry their speakers by "underpowering" is because the amplifier of say 80 watts rms per channel is halfway clipped most of the time (don't laugh many people actually prefer this sound in their music) resulting in somewhere near 120 watts rms or more being sent to their 100 watt speaker. This amount of power, over time, overheats the coil. It could also be attributed to the fact that many loudspeakers simply inflate their rms ratings. Combine the two and you have disaster on your hands.

A true rms rating should be x amount of input power sustained for y amount of hours. I believe JL Audio's rms ratings for their speakers are typically for an 8 hour period. This means they will handle the amount of power claimed for at least 8 hours. Some manufacturers use a 1 hour sustained method, others 1 minute. The shorter the time, the higher the number, the greater the chance for failure as it is reached or exceeded. The actual individual driver design weighs in pretty heavy here too but I am not going into it that far.

In any case, if under-powering blew speakers, everytime you lowered the volume on your system your speakers would cry out "too little power, I am going to fail... ppaaaahhh (last breath)"

 

[highfigh]

I didn't even know this thread was still going.

Obviously no one bothered looking up any past threads on this topic.

When an amplifier begins to clip, it's output power raises rapidly. A fully clipped amplifier will typically double it's rated output power at .1% thd.

That being said, a 100 watt speaker can burn up off of an 80 watt amplifier as the amplifier can deliver in upwards of 160watts when fully clipped.

If a speaker is rated for 500 watts rms power handling, an 80 watt amplifier (80 watts rms from 20hz-20khz @ .1% thd at 8 ohm), even when fully clipped should not cause any damage to the speaker, unless of course the power ratings were not correct to begin with Sure, it will sound horrible, but their should be no ill affect on the speaker. Distortion in and of itself does not fry speakers. It is the added power the amplifier produces while clipping that fry's speakers.

The reason people fry their speakers by "underpowering" is because the amplifier of say 80 watts rms per channel is halfway clipped most of the time (don't laugh many people actually prefer this sound in their music) resulting in somewhere near 120 watts rms or more being sent to their 100 watt speaker. This amount of power, over time, overheats the coil. It could also be attributed to the fact that many loudspeakers simply inflate their rms ratings. Combine the two and you have disaster on your hands.

A true rms rating should be x amount of input power sustained for y amount of hours. I believe JL Audio's rms ratings for their speakers are typically for an 8 hour period. This means they will handle the amount of power claimed for at least 8 hours. Some manufacturers use a 1 hour sustained method, others 1 minute. The shorter the time, the higher the number, the greater the chance for failure as it is reached or exceeded. The actual individual driver design weighs in pretty heavy here too but I am not going into it that far.

I think all speaker manufacturers rate their speakers for long-term power handling. If they don't, it's pretty irresponsible.

However, I don't think you're factoring in the effect of harmonics on the tweeter when the amp reaches a high percentage of distortion. If the speaker can't reproduce it, it turns to heat unless the impedance is extremely high in that range. Ferro-fluid does a great job of saving speakers but it's not infallible. As I posted before, I have seen many drivers go because of low power amps and receivers. Most denied how it happened but eventually, all admitted that they cranked the heck out of it for a long time.

Either way, I agree that it's less likely to happen with newer equipment but it can still happen.

"In any case, if under-powering blew speakers, everytime you lowered the volume on your system your speakers would cry out "too little power, I am going to fail... ppaaaahhh (last breath)"

Nobody said underpowering a speaker will damage it. The problem comes when someone with a 45 W/ch receiver wants to play The Who - 'Live At Leeds' at live concert volume.

 

[gixxerific]

One word "Headroom" oh and be easy with the gains\volume

 

[TLS Guy]

I think all speaker manufacturers rate their speakers for long-term power handling. If they don't, it's pretty irresponsible.

What are you smoking? Loudspeaker manufacturers are absolutely renowned for obfuscation and spin, especially when it comes to power handling, and many other parameters.

 

[highfigh]

What are you smoking? Loudspeaker manufacturers are absolutely renowned for obfuscation and spin, especially when it comes to power handling, and many other parameters.

I said they rate them for that, I didn't say their ratings were accurate and while I didn't make that point, I should have. There's a word that I believe should follow the power handling spec for some speakers- "Once".

"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away".

 

[annunaki]

I think all speaker manufacturers rate their speakers for long-term power handling. If they don't, it's pretty irresponsible.

There is much you need to learn about how much the marketing department exaggerates what an engineering department does. There is a lot of irresponsibility in the market place, especially when it comes to power ratings whether it be speakers or amplifiers.