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Can you ever have too powerful amp for speakers?

Can you ever have "too powerful amp for speakers"?
Suppose you have a 300 watt per channel amp driving speakers that only demand, say 80-100 watts a channel or have high enough sensitivity, or a regular 8 ohm load, will some massive Audio Research or Krell amp, even if it is far in excess of what the speaker needs, it should be fine, right? You just never end up turning your preamp volume pot up very loud...or is it better to have an amp that you can peg the preamp much higher say 12 noon or 2 o clock?
dustbowl
has2be's avatar
has2be
555 posts
 
I agree with Stanwal. Never enough clean watts when accompanied with High Current and quality built. Control of speaker and far less chance of distortion. Cheers
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
Most speaker damage occurs during an event called 'clipping'. This happens when you overdrive an underpowered amp. It's much harder to damage a speaker when using clean power. So if your speakers are rated 80-100 wpc, a 50 wpc amp has a much higher chance of damaging your speakers than a 300 wpc amp.
xiekitchen
821 posts
 
If you have smaller minimonitors and play records... those big amps can bottom out the woofs with record warp or transient kick drum hits (happened to me). So... easy does it.
schipo
1,268 posts
 
usually its power amps with poor designed power supplies that cause the most damage to speakers...
bob_bundus
1,834 posts
 
300 watts on 100W speakers is ideal; plenty of clean headroom. I've sometimes gone as much as 5 to 1. Only throwing all common sense out the window (regarding drive levels) would cause any problems. Go for it!
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