AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - Audio amp 40 watts, loudspeaker 19 watts; How to adapt?

"MZ" pam
wrote:

I agree with all of the above. In fact, it can be advantageous to
have an amp that is rated higher in power than the rating on the
speakers. I've seen a 40 watt amp fry a pair of speakers rated at
100 watts each due to significant abuse of the system (they were
trying to use it in a hall much larger than they should have).

That's what you get when you assume power ratings to accurately reflect true
power handling capabilities.

This is true. Tweeters generally have a modest power handling capability. But
the Urban Legend about small amplifiers being dangerous to speakers is chronic
and widespread.

A few years ago at a PSACS meeting a speaker technician from an Illinois
retailer gave a talk about speaker damage and repair. When asked if small
amplifiers were dangerous to tweeters he emphatically said "oh yes" and
produced a discolored voice coil (from a small woofer) and declared that this
damage came from using a small amplifier.

Because the coil looked like several others he had shown earlier I asked how he
knew that that had been the case. He said that he knew the owner of that
speaker and had watched him "abuse that speaker with that little amp ... for
years" completely ignoring the possibility that the guy might have blown up
that speaker in much less time with a bigger amplifier.

I'm of the thought that the urban legend of small amplifiers and tweeter damage
is simply a retail technqiue to sell amplifiers when some one brings in a
damaged speaker. Because the most likely speaker damage is a blown tweeter the
Legend gets to be used most often for that situation.

I sometimes challange the Legend with what I call the "Underpowering Contra
Argument". If "underpowering" with a small amplifier were the true cause of
speaker damage then driving one with the output from your preamplifier or from
the headphone jack on a walkman should be avoided at all cost.