[jspaperstacks]

I have a Crosley CR 78CD turntable that can be used with its built in speaker or attached to external speakers. The speaker outs are rated for 8 ohm/5 watts. Is it ok to use speakers rated for much high power than this? I have a set of 8 ohm/200 watt speakers and a set of 6 ohm/ 100 watt speakers and I'm wondering if either or both of these sets would be ok to use. I have hooked it up and tried it out with these speakers for a short time and the sound is fine but I have read some comments that suggest that over time powering speakers with a much weaker power than they are rated for can be bad, is this true?


Also, is there such a thing as a small amp (speaker wire in/speaker wire out) that could sit in between the player and the speakers that would help?


Thanks



**title should be "Low watt output to higher watt speakers", without the extra "high"

 

[JOHNnDENVER]

The 8ohm rating is the important one and they will work fine.

 

[schan1269]

5 watts(provided it isn't overly stressed) will get louder than you expect.

 

[Vic C]

As long as you dont turn it up into distortion land youll be fine. Why its bad is the distortion is actually DC voltage and that over time will burn out voice coils.

 

[MichaelJHuman]

I think of distortion as being bad, because average power is higher than expected, because the peaks are clipped off. I don't think of it as DC though. To me, true DC would be caused by a DC offset due to a malfunctioning amp (which would definitely be a problem for the voice coil.)

 

[Vic C]

See pic.

 

[MichaelJHuman]

Yes, sir. I know what clipping looks like. It's still not DC, IMO. Semantics, perhaps. But in my mind, DC only occurs in AC if you have a DC offset (meaning that there's a DC voltage present at all times at the speaker outputs - a bad thing, usually indicating servicing is needed. In your example, while the wave does look like DC for periods of time, it's still AC. Even if it was a square wave, it's still AC. I don't pretend to be an engineer, but that's my understand of how the terms are defined.


A number of articles on clipping by respected engineers come to the same conclusion about speaker damage due to clipping - the problem is too much power...RMS voltage is too high leading to too high of current leading to thermal failure of the voice coil.


See the Rodd Elliott article on the topic, it dismisses some of the common "myths" about why clipping damages speakers. A few other engineers have concluded the same thing. He does mention DC as a potential problem in one of his articles, but as I recall, he's only talking about DC offset.


It's mostly irrelevant as the end result is the same. Turn down the volume if you hear distortion, because that probably means a lot of clipping, which means average voltage level is high. And that's really no different than the affects of DC offset (you could have DC offset, which would effectively raise average current levels leading to voice coil failure.)