How much wattage is too much?

A buddy of mine was telling me that I need to get an amp with at least 30% more watts RMS then what my speakers are rated. After he explained himself, it sounded reasonable, but I was still concerned about blowing my speakers.

I'm looking into purchasing:
Amp: Alpine MVR-340
Components: Alpine SPR-176A
Rear Speakers: Not sure yet....

Please let me know what you think of my setup or if you have any other suggestions.

 

Good clean power is what you need. Alpines make good amps, so you dont have to worry about distorted signals that might blow your speakers.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by samura1
How much wattage is too much?

 

30% is a reasonable figure, although it's not a hard and set value. Amps tend to distort as you approach their max settings, so you want an amp that can output 10-20% more power than you will ever conceivably use (i.e., how loud you ever plan on listening to music). Adding in this buffer range prevents the amp from distorting your signal any more than it has to at high volume levels. Of course, putting in a 4,000W system when you only listen at 50W volumes is kind of pointless.

 

Thanks for the good responses. Looks like I'll get MRV-F540, it is the next steup up and outputs 80Wx4.

 

if you are dealing with components then it's recommended that you get more wattage power from the amp...lower amp power than what is needed for the component will give you distortion...but overpowering amps wif also give you distortion and might blow your components if you turn the volume over the limit...

 

This is an oft-quoted, but incorrect, idea. You can have 100W speakers running perfectly fine from a 50W amp. The distortion comes from exactly where I mentioned in my previous post, the amplifier being driven close to the power rails.

 

Well.......too much to me means anything your car's alternator cannot support. A car can simply not run 4000W on a stock alternator.

30% breathing room is a good number.

 

I dont think you want to go 30 percent over. Most high end amps are well under rated as it is. If my speakers say 100 watts RMS and 150Peak, i would never get more then an amp that is suppose to put 80-100. You dont want to run over RMS all the time.

On 99percent of components, 50 watts RMS will not give you distortion. My MM6 components say they are capable of 20-100RMS for instance. At 50 watts RMS they would be plenty strong.


Remember that most MTX, Alpine, etc. amps are rated at 12.4 volts, at 14.4 volts or the dynamic power you get a lot more. They originally underrated amps for comp... not sure why they do it so much now.

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by s2k_PikeStyle
I dont think you want to go 30 percent over.