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Junior Varsity
matching amp with speakers
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<blockquote data-quote="John Roberts" data-source="post: 122428" data-attributes="member: 126"><p>Re: matching amp with speakers</p><p></p><p>There has been a great deal written about this topic over the years. Even including some popular rules of thumb, but as Ivan said no simple definitive answers. </p><p></p><p>Another way to think about this is what size motor do you put in your car/truck? The truck is heavier (like a low efficiency speaker) so needs a bigger motor just to accelerate and drive similar to the car. Just because you have a possibly oversized motor in your car/truck doesn't mean you will use it at full-throttle all the time. It would probably overheat or break something if you tried. </p><p></p><p>An important part of this analogy, often forgotten in the speaker/amp size discussion is the operator. In a car/truck the bigger the motor the better, unless it is too difficult to drive safely or without breaking something. Same thing goes for amp/speaker combinations, as long as you can drive the system "safely" some extra power is generally a good thing (it's called headroom). You can overheat and/or break a too small motor/car-truck combination by pushing it too hard just to keep up with traffic. </p><p></p><p>The right balance of power for the equipment keeps everybody happy, but the driver (operator) can still break it if he pushes a properly sized system too hard. </p><p></p><p>JR</p><p></p><p>PS: Back about 20 years ago while I was working at Peavey I generated a matrix of all the amps that Peavey sold on one axis, and all the loudspeakers that Peavey sold on the other axis. Then I asked the transducer (speaker) design engineers to check the boxes for the amps that they wanted to see their speakers designs driven by. This was a useful reference for the Peavey dealers and customers while amplifiers have grown larger since then and loudspeaker power handling has evolved too. I make no secret of the fact that I favor powered speakers where once again the design engineer is making these decisions for us. Just like the car makers decide what motor to put in your car.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="John Roberts, post: 122428, member: 126"] Re: matching amp with speakers There has been a great deal written about this topic over the years. Even including some popular rules of thumb, but as Ivan said no simple definitive answers. Another way to think about this is what size motor do you put in your car/truck? The truck is heavier (like a low efficiency speaker) so needs a bigger motor just to accelerate and drive similar to the car. Just because you have a possibly oversized motor in your car/truck doesn't mean you will use it at full-throttle all the time. It would probably overheat or break something if you tried. An important part of this analogy, often forgotten in the speaker/amp size discussion is the operator. In a car/truck the bigger the motor the better, unless it is too difficult to drive safely or without breaking something. Same thing goes for amp/speaker combinations, as long as you can drive the system "safely" some extra power is generally a good thing (it's called headroom). You can overheat and/or break a too small motor/car-truck combination by pushing it too hard just to keep up with traffic. The right balance of power for the equipment keeps everybody happy, but the driver (operator) can still break it if he pushes a properly sized system too hard. JR PS: Back about 20 years ago while I was working at Peavey I generated a matrix of all the amps that Peavey sold on one axis, and all the loudspeakers that Peavey sold on the other axis. Then I asked the transducer (speaker) design engineers to check the boxes for the amps that they wanted to see their speakers designs driven by. This was a useful reference for the Peavey dealers and customers while amplifiers have grown larger since then and loudspeaker power handling has evolved too. I make no secret of the fact that I favor powered speakers where once again the design engineer is making these decisions for us. Just like the car makers decide what motor to put in your car. [/QUOTE]
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