help me decide the rating of amp

[kalakotim]

Good morning Everyone!!,
I am a newbie in HT field, so pardon my ignorance. I have PSB T45s as fronts( L & R) connected to Denon 1905.I am thinking of buying a two channel amp to drive my fronts.The speakers are rated from 20W to 150W and Denon is rated at 80wpc. Can i go for a 200w/channel amp?. Then would it blow off my fronts? or is there a way to control the gain on the amp?

Thanks

 

[crashguy]

A 200w per channel amp would be fine. You are far more likely to kill a speaker with a clipped signal (overdriving an under powered amp) than you are from overdriving them with clean power. The wattage ratings on speakers are notoriously meaningless. I remember a test of psb stratus golds in stereo review about ten years ago where they took almost 10,000w without damage.

Good luck on your amp search.

 

[rschleicher]

I agree with just about everything in the previous post, but did want to nit-pick a little about the 10,000 watt test by Stereo Review. As part of his normal testing process, Julian Hirsch (who use to be the main tester/reviewer for Stereo Review) would apply single-cycle tone bursts at various frequencies, to see how much power it would take to literally bottom-out the speaker drivers. As the previous poster noted, this was often in the many hundreds, or even thousands of Watts. But, only for one cycle (so with a 1 kHz tone burst, the total duration was only 1 millisecond). You could not apply nearly so much power of a continuous tone, without causing damage to the speaker.

But, the main point of the post is totally true - it is far more likely to damage a speaker by driving it with an underpowered amp, driven to clipping, than via too much clean power.

 

[mtrycrafts]

Good morning Everyone!!,
I am a newbie in HT field, so pardon my ignorance. I have PSB T45s as fronts( L & R) connected to Denon 1905.I am thinking of buying a two channel amp to drive my fronts.The speakers are rated from 20W to 150W and Denon is rated at 80wpc. Can i go for a 200w/channel amp?. Then would it blow off my fronts? or is there a way to control the gain on the amp?

Thanks

Why are you thinking of this upgrade?
You would gain about 4dB of volume, not that much.

 

[crashguy]

I agree with just about everything in the previous post, but did want to nit-pick a little about the 10,000 watt test by Stereo Review. As part of his normal testing process, Julian Hirsch (who use to be the main tester/reviewer for Stereo Review) would apply single-cycle tone bursts at various frequencies, to see how much power it would take to literally bottom-out the speaker drivers. As the previous poster noted, this was often in the many hundreds, or even thousands of Watts. But, only for one cycle (so with a 1 kHz tone burst, the total duration was only 1 millisecond). You could not apply nearly so much power of a continuous tone, without causing damage to the speaker.

But, the main point of the post is totally true - it is far more likely to damage a speaker by driving it with an underpowered amp, driven to clipping, than via too much clean power.

Exaggeration for effect....

 

[kalakotim]

Why are you thinking of this upgrade?
You would gain about 4dB of volume, not that much.

I wannna take load off the receiver .. its rated 80WPC when driving 8 ohm speakers.But mine are rated at 6 ohms

 

[kalakotim]

I agree with just about everything in the previous post, but did want to nit-pick a little about the 10,000 watt test by Stereo Review. As part of his normal testing process, Julian Hirsch (who use to be the main tester/reviewer for Stereo Review) would apply single-cycle tone bursts at various frequencies, to see how much power it would take to literally bottom-out the speaker drivers. As the previous poster noted, this was often in the many hundreds, or even thousands of Watts. But, only for one cycle (so with a 1 kHz tone burst, the total duration was only 1 millisecond). You could not apply nearly so much power of a continuous tone, without causing damage to the speaker.

But, the main point of the post is totally true - it is far more likely to damage a speaker by driving it with an underpowered amp, driven to clipping, than via too much clean power.

Thank you all.