I have ordered a Sonos Amp to use with stereo speakers that are rated for 150W at 6ohm. The Amp is 187w at 6ohm. Can I still use it with these speakers?
Best answer by Stanley_4
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Userlevel 7
+22
Yes you can use it.
The only chance of an issue is if you crank the volume up to the maximum, way past where the music starts sounding bad.
I was told that the speakers I have will sound better with an amp that has a higher watt rating, like 150 wats a channel at 8ohms. The amp wouldn’t have to work as hard to power the speakers and less risk of the amp peaking and popping a woofer. Any sense in that?
Userlevel 7
+22
You will rarely see speaker damage from an amplifier, high or low power, that isn’t pushed to the point it sounds pretty awful.
Having more power available than your speakers are rated for can make a difference in their response to transients, usually not audible until you have the volume way up. Most folks will never hear the difference either.
I used a 600 watt amp feeding speakers rated for 100 to 250 watts with no problems for years. I rarely had the speakers playing really loud, didn’t want to blow out my ears worse than they were.
Going the other way I used a 5 watt amp to drive speakers that had a recommended power of 60 Watts. They sounded pretty good at lower volume levels but you could really hear the distortion if you cranked them up.
If you dig around the Internet you can find a lot of good discussion on speaker efficiency and power handling versus amplifier power. You will have to sort out the good ones from the bad but it can be fun reading.
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