Need help with a receiver (1 Viewer)

[ZtriDer]

Hi.

I am in need of some help as I am quite clueless about audio.
I am making a simple home cinema with 5.1 setup and I have a set of old Yamaha speakers, but I am afraid that the receiver I have is not powerfull enough.
The speakers are:
2x Yamaha NS-515F
1x Yamaha NS-C515
2x Yamaha NS-M515
1x Yamaha YST-SW515
The info on the speakers is that they are 6 ohm and have a nominal power of 100w and max power 300w.
The receiver I have now is an Onkyo tx-sr507 that has a power delivery of 80w at 8 ohm.
I have heard that using a receiver that is too weak will kill the speakers.

With this speakers, what kind of power delivery should I be looking for?

Thanks.

 

[kalm_traveler]

Hi.

I am in need of some help as I am quite clueless about audio.
I am making a simple home cinema with 5.1 setup and I have a set of old Yamaha speakers, but I am afraid that the receiver I have is not powerfull enough.
The speakers are:
2x Yamaha NS-515F
1x Yamaha NS-C515
2x Yamaha NS-M515
1x Yamaha YST-SW515
The info on the speakers is that they are 6 ohm and have a nominal power of 100w and max power 300w.
The receiver I have now is an Onkyo tx-sr507 that has a power delivery of 80w at 8 ohm.
I have heard that using a receiver that is too weak will kill the speakers.

With this speakers, what kind of power delivery should I be looking for?

Thanks.

I'm far from an expert, but as I understand it as long as you aren't cranking the volume of the receiver up it should be ok. A risk of driving high-power speakers with a weak amplifier is I believe if the amp hits its maximum output and clips (cuts out) which can damage the speakers.

max ratings don't seem to mean anything quantifiable as far as I can find, but that receiver is definitely on the weak side. If possible, as of this week I can strongly recommend an external amplifier and it looks like your Onkyo has RCA pre-outs so you could just get one of those and connect it to drive the speakers instead of the Onkyo driving them.

Not sure what kind of budget you're looking at but I picked up an Outlaw 5000x (5 channel amplifier only) new this week for about $800 shipped and I'm either crazy or it really blows away the amps in my Yamaha AVR. Thing sounds absolutely amazing, and I thought the Yamaha already sounded good.

 

[JohnRice]

Hi.

I am in need of some help as I am quite clueless about audio.
I am making a simple home cinema with 5.1 setup and I have a set of old Yamaha speakers, but I am afraid that the receiver I have is not powerfull enough.
The speakers are:
2x Yamaha NS-515F
1x Yamaha NS-C515
2x Yamaha NS-M515
1x Yamaha YST-SW515
The info on the speakers is that they are 6 ohm and have a nominal power of 100w and max power 300w.
The receiver I have now is an Onkyo tx-sr507 that has a power delivery of 80w at 8 ohm.
I have heard that using a receiver that is too weak will kill the speakers.

With this speakers, what kind of power delivery should I be looking for?

Thanks.

There's nothing to get too concerned about. It's true that speakers are damaged by too little power far more often than too much power, but that doesn't mean your receiver is going to cause any problems. Those ratings are just very basic guidelines. If you don't crank up the system to an extreme, you're fine.

Regarding Jake's suggestion of an external amp, your receiver does have a couple preamp outputs, but they seem to be only for rear surround speakers, and a sub. It appears you can't really add more power to your main channels.

 

[kalm_traveler]

There's nothing to get too concerned about. It's true that speakers are damaged by too little power far more often than too much power, but that doesn't mean your receiver is going to cause any problems. Those ratings are just very basic guidelines. If you don't crank up the system to an extreme, you're fine.

Regarding Jake's suggestion of an external amp, your receiver does have a couple preamp outputs, but they seem to be only for rear surround speakers, and a sub. It appears you can't really add more power to your main channels.

ah shoot you're right, I didn't find a high-res picture of the back and just saw what looked to be 5 preouts

In that case I would probably think about a different receiver. One thing to keep in mind is the used market is often pretty great if you don't need the latest and greatest.

I sold my previous AVR a Yamaha RX-A1030 for $100 because I needed it gone, it can't pass through HDR and a local guy had a 7.1 AVR die on him recently, for example.

 

[jcroy]

I'm far from an expert, but as I understand it as long as you aren't cranking the volume of the receiver up it should be ok. A risk of driving high-power speakers with a weak amplifier is I believe if the amp hits its maximum output and clips (cuts out) which can damage the speakers.

I can attest to this anecdotally.

Back in the day, I had a set of large speakers where I was using a weak amplifier. Cranking up the volume knob high on the weak amplifier, it was obvious clipping was already happening.

Not knowing any better, I still kept the volume knob at almost 10. I thought the speakers could handle it, but I was very wrong. After a few months of this, one of the tweeters abruptly died. Eventually one of the woofers also malfunctioned, due to the cranked up to almost 10 volume and the bass knob also cranked up.