Myo K

will these receiver underpower my speakers?

im currently using them with mirage omno polar speakers i have bookshelf speakers for fronts and omni center both rated at 125 watts and 150 watts rms respectively.


im looking for a reciever that has a decent thd, i want clean sound, since i use it a lot for music. i hasitly bought a 5.1 pioneer vsx 411, thats rated at 1% thd and there was a white noise constantly that annoyed me. it ruined everythign the sound of anything that i used it to play

i had a kenwood 6070 but returned it because of defection, and there were no more units left at BB, that receiver had audio that was good enough for me to listen to music, but those receivers are disconued and sounded as if it was underpowering hte speakers since the level of sound quality jump dramatically after the volume knob passed the 2/5thhs mark

now im interested in harmon kardon, but i only has about 400-500 dollars to spend and i was look at hk's in that price range for 5.1

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/3335912

it has an output power of 45 watts per channel

http://shop3.outpost.com/product/3335922

or this one with 55 watts.


what frightens me is that the kenwood receiver was tested by sv magazine and they rated it at a constant 92 watts per channel through x 6, so if the hk's are 55/45 watts are accurate, then will these receivers kill my speakers?
people have also told me that the hks are high current (i dont know if the models i listed are high current though)
and that the kenwood is low current, would that make any difference in powering/underpowering my speakers?

anyone know the answer?

thanks a lot , sorry for all "?"s im a noobie.

Myo K

anyone harmon kardon owners?

Adam.Gonsman

Myo,
I'm not a harmon owner but HK's have a lot of respect from a lot of people on this forumn. I'm sure some HK people will jump in here soon. As for the high current, some say it's meaninful, others say it's marketing. Depends on who you ask.

I do beleive that HK tends to be more honest about their power ratings than some manufacturers. But to answer your questions about if these HK's have enough wattage, I don't know if there's a cut and dry answer. A lot depends on what size room you have and how loud you like to listen to you music.

If you tend to keep the volume somewhat low, you'll probably be ok with 45 or 55 watts per channel. But I would be a little worried if it were me.

Those Mirage speakers have their sensitivity rated at 91db for the bookshelfs and 90db for the center. That's getting down there a little bit in sensitivity. That means that these speakers take more power than some others to drive them to the same volume.

If it were me, I would be searching for a little more power. Even something around 75 or 85 watts per channel would make me more comfortable. I realize budget is a concern though so you're stuck with a compromise. If music is very important to you, have you considered buying a used or close out model? These may be lacking in some of the newer home theater formats, but would give you a good budget conscious step up in cleaner more powerful amps which would greatly benifit your music.

Carl Johnson

My 65 watt HK receiver is easily more powerful than the 110 watt Kenwood receiver that it replaced. I'm not sure how these measurements are taken but I'm sure the HK will be able to safely power your speakers.

Myo K

Those Mirage speakers have their sensitivity rated at 91db for the bookshelfs and 90db for the center. That's getting down there a little bit in sensitivity.

really? wow! shows how much i know about speaker hee hee, i thought 91 was pretty good, but then i was comaring them to other speakers that had 85-88db, but then im aware that many of you have multi thousand dollar set ups.

the previous kenwood receiver i used 6070 got plenty loud.

my room is about 15'x15', i recall owning a dreaded sony 740 htib which was supposedly rated at 80 watts per channel, but at max volume couldnt even fill a 15'x'15 room with sound.

--

i dont have a way of auditioning them so its all or nothing for me.

everyone tells me that if i get an amp with a power output that does not match the speakers rms, that itll cause the speaker to work harder and the eventually damage it. im sure this is where an audiophile that has insurmountable knowledge of speaker/receivers specs and ratios would come in handy and break down the science into noob poorman terms for me so i may understand this.

RobWil

I will concur with Carl...the 65wpc x 2 HK seems to out-power the 100wpc x 2 Kenwood I tested it against. Without knowing anything else an 'electronically challenged' person such as I would be tempted to attribute that to 'high current' vs 'low current' design.

Adam.Gonsman

Myo,
You're right in the 91db isn't super low. But it's not overly high either.

You're room is not real large though. This is in your favor.

As for RMS, powerhandling and all that, it's not so important that you match RMS of your speakers to amp power. What is import is that your amps can provide clean power all the way up to the volume you listen at. Under powering your speakers can damage them. If you want to know more, there are countless discussions on this forum about power handling of speakers.

Whether 55 watts would be enough power, and without dealing with gain from room size, loss from distance to speakers etc, remember that it takes a doubling of power to acheive a 3 db gain in volume. My main concern here is that because of the exponential power requirements in volume, that in the lower wattages, the differences between a 55 and 65 watt amp are much greater than the differences between a 100 and 110 watt amp. The same wattage difference has greater impact the lower it occurs.

By the same token, if I were Myo, I would feel much better about buying the 55 watt model than the 45. Based on your room size, I personally would feel comfortable buying the 55 watt and not worrying about speaker damage. I would feel even better yet about a 65 or 75 watt model. Is a 100 or 110 watt needed? No.

All the above is assuming real wattage ratings. I'm certainly not about to argue with Carl or Rob. I have no doubts that the 65 watt HK out powers the 100 watt Kenwood. My feeling (and I am by far *not* the authority on the subject) on this though is that that has less to do with high current and low current design and more to due with HK is more honest about their specs. A number of brands are known to way over inflate their power ratings.

Paul_Fisher

Go to www.harmanaudio.com. You can get a refurbished AVR520 for about $550. This is one hell of a receiver. There is nothing wrong with buying refurbished directly from Harmon, they even come with a one year warranty. I bought a AVR 120 refurbed from them and it has worked flawlessly.

Adam.Gonsman

Paul,
Excellent find. This is definately the way to go in my opinion.

Eric_E

Better yet, J&R has the HK AVR-520 new for $499. I just bought one of these myself, and it came out to $531 after shipping. Should be here on Thursday. I love the fact that I can just add a two-channel amp later if I want to go 7.1, and I love that it doesn't have a fan like the 525!

Jonathan M

Note that the difference between 55W and 45W here is minimal - you need to DOUBLE the output wattage to increase the volume by just 3 dB. the increase of 10W hear will make less than 1dB difference.

Don't worry too much about the rating on the loudspeakers - it is basically meaningless. Reason being that most loudspeaker driver manufacturers rate the power handling capability as the amount of power that the voice coil can withstand before going poof. FAR before you get to this point, the speaker will be exceeding it's Xmech (excursion limits - how far it can move in and out). You'll probably find that many manufacturers use crappy xover components that are rated fairly low so that they blow before the drivers.

Remember that most people on average only listen to about 1-5Watts or so. 5Watts average will be VERY loud on your speakers (Assuming they ARE 91dB/watt sensitive) in your room. This is due to the peaky nature of music. The average is usually 10-20dB or so below the peak levels (or should be on decent recordings - this is another matter though!) thus you only need between 1/8th and 1/64th of the power requirements on average. The peaks only occur for a very short period of time, and your speakers will likely not fret too much about this because of the short time. You are likely to turn it down anyway if you start to near the limits of the speakers, as it won't sound too good.

Verdict: Don't panic about the ratings on your speakers. They are all mostly contrived anyway.

Hope this helps clear things up.

\"Price and quality are not correlated\"

DIY Home Theatre