[Ryan Leemhuis]

Will a HK 335 or 435 be able to handle driving 4 ohm speakers decently loud? Anyone have any experience with this?

If you visit the DIY forum you already know that this question would be in regards to a MTM design bookshelf I would like to build.

[John Garcia]

Though they put out plenty of current, I don't think the H/Ks are <4 Ohm stable. IIRC, the protection circuitry will shut them down if the impedance drops too low. This will depend on the size of your room vs the SPL you will be looking for from them and how sensitive they are. If they have high enough sensitivity, it may not be a problem, and if you are saying all the other speakers will be 8 Ohm, you should be OK. As someone noted in your post in the DIY area, you can't really tell until you hook 'em up and try 'em.

[Scott Oliver]

My easy to drive, 4 ohm, JM Reynaud speakers, that are singing away just fine with 13 watts powering them currently, shut down and blew the fuses on both channels of an HK Sig 2.1 even though I was only using 2 out of 5 channels, and I had only hit about 75-80 decibel levels. That's my experience, so I would proceed with caution.

[Shiu]

As far as I can remember, HK has always claimed high current, but not 4 ohm stable capability. I think the 7XXX series will likely do fine but as others has said, be careful with the lower priced models such as the 335.