AVR Advice

[Wstu9823]

I’m looking to get an AVR for some monolith 265b bookshelves and the center. These are 4 ohms but I’m playing it in a pretty small room. I’m quite confused on what receivers could actually handle these speakers without damaging them. Only going to have at max a 7.2 setup couldn’t need anything crazy. Any help on how to tell which 6-8 ohm rated receivers could actually handle the speakers?

 

[kyuu]

Speakers don't have a single impedance, they have impedance curves. The one for your speaker looks like this:

That's not a terribly challenging impedance curve. Any AVR that isn't complete garbage should be able to handle that with no issue. And by the way, never use the lower impedance settings on AVRs. Always leave them set to 8 ohm regardless of the load. All the 4 ohm setting does is reduce the amount of power available. That's it.

 

[Wstu9823]

Okay so I wouldn’t have to worry about like a Denon AVR s970h burning out or damaging the speakers?

 

[kemmler3D]

The speakers are rated for 250 wpc and that Denon only does 90 wpc, so no.

If you actually drive the AVR beyond clipping too much, it can burn the tweeters because you are sending too much high frequency energy in. This is pretty rare unless you are drunkenly blasting music for a party beyond all reason.

Realistically, damaging a speaker by playing it too loud is not a subtle thing. It will sound quite bad before it breaks.

 

[Wstu9823]

Okay so I wouldn’t have to worry about like a Denon AVR s970h burning out or damaging the speakers?

Going to be in a smaller room so I won’t be firing them near 100%

 

[Wstu9823]

The speakers are rated for 250 wpc and that Denon only does 90 wpc, so no.

If you actually drive the AVR beyond clipping too much, it can burn the tweeters because you are sending too much high frequency energy in. This is pretty rare unless you are drunkenly blasting music for a party beyond all reason.

Realistically, damaging a speaker by playing it too loud is not a subtle thing. It will sound quite bad before it breaks.

Okay so the AVR itself is more of the issue then right? Would that one be good enough to not overheat? Is there any like easy way to find stuff like that out?

 

[kemmler3D]

Okay so the AVR itself is more of the issue then right? Would that one be good enough to not overheat?

Going to be in a smaller room so I won’t be firing them near 100%

You are not really at risk of hurting anything unless you are pushing at or near 100% on the AVR, and that is actually easy to avoid, more than you would think.

Something to keep in mind that isn't really intuitive is that 2x the power only gets you +3dB of actual volume.

The speakers you are using deliver 83dB @ 1 meter distance at 1 watt of power. This is already reasonably loud, you may not even want to push far past that.

At half power (45w) you get 96.5dB from your speakers at 2m. This is like putting your head right next to a garbage disposal while it's running. Most people find this SPL unpleasantly loud. It's enough to damage hearing in less than 1 hour.

Going to full power (90w) you get 99.5dB. This is maybe noticeably louder than 96.5, but not a lot louder, and you're already too loud at half power, so why would you really turn it up more than halfway?

So in practice you're not going to find yourself turning it up to full power and leaving it there, which is the only situation where you might damage either the AVR or the speakers.

Almost all speakers already do decently loud volume with one watt, so the risk of blowing speakers is (ha) overblown. Most of the time when a speaker gets blown up by an amp, it's either A) drunk people fully maxing it out or B) a glitch causes 100% power from an amp that is bigger than the rated power of the speaker.

In your case the speaker can handle more than the amp can put out, so all you really need to do is make sure you don't throw a party where drunk people have access to the volume knob on the AVR.

You can play with an SPL calculator to see what I mean here: https://mehlau.net/audio/spl/

Is there any like easy way to find stuff like that out?

Basically just look at the watts per channel of the amp, and the recommended power for the speaker. You can find both in the 'specs' section. You don't want an amp that is lower than the low end of the recommended watts for the speaker. And you don't want an amp that is many times higher than the high end of the recommended watts for the speaker - it's fine if it is, but then you need to be careful not to turn it up too far. In your case the amp is in the middle of the range so there's no real cause for concern.

 

[Wstu9823]

You are not really at risk of hurting anything unless you are pushing at or near 100% on the AVR, and that is actually easy to avoid, more than you would think.

Something to keep in mind that isn't really intuitive is that 2x the power only gets you +3dB of actual volume.

The speakers you are using deliver 83dB @ 1 meter distance at 1 watt of power. This is already reasonably loud, you may not even want to push far past that.

At half power (45w) you get 96.5dB from your speakers at 2m. This is like putting your head right next to a garbage disposal while it's running. Most people find this SPL unpleasantly loud. It's enough to damage hearing in less than 1 hour.

Going to full power (90w) you get 99.5dB. This is maybe noticeably louder than 96.5, but not a lot louder, and you're already too loud at half power, so why would you really turn it up more than halfway?

So in practice you're not going to find yourself turning it up to full power and leaving it there, which is the only situation where you might damage either the AVR or the speakers.

Almost all speakers already do decently loud volume with one watt, so the risk of blowing speakers is (ha) overblown. Most of the time when a speaker gets blown up by an amp, it's either A) drunk people fully maxing it out or B) a glitch causes 100% power from an amp that is bigger than the rated power of the speaker.

In your case the speaker can handle more than the amp can put out, so all you really need to do is make sure you don't throw a party where drunk people have access to the volume knob on the AVR.

You can play with an SPL calculator to see what I mean here: https://mehlau.net/audio/spl/


Basically just look at the watts per channel of the amp, and the recommended power for the speaker. You can find both in the 'specs' section. You don't want an amp that is lower than the low end of the recommended watts for the speaker. And you don't want an amp that is many times higher than the high end of the recommended watts for the speaker - it's fine if it is, but then you need to be careful not to turn it up too far. In your case the amp is in the middle of the range so there's no real cause for concern.

Thank you so much that is incredibly helpful

 

[mhardy6647]

Speakers don't have a single impedance, they have impedance curves. The one for your speaker looks like this:

View attachment 488196

That's not a terribly challenging impedance curve. Any AVR that isn't complete garbage should be able to handle that with no issue. And by the way, never use the lower impedance settings on AVRs. Always leave them set to 8 ohm regardless of the load. All the 4 ohm setting does is reduce the amount of power available. That's it.

Looks like 3 ohms at 140 Hz.... which I wouldn't consider terribly amplifier friendly per se. Of course, we don't know the phase angle from this curve, so there's that, too.

 

[SKBubba]

This is pretty rare unless you are drunkenly blasting music for a party beyond all reason.

Been there, done that.