Ok I have new speakers, haven't installed them yet.
They say 140 W. Max (25 W. Nominal)

Now I have a 100 W Amp that put out a rated Continuous 40 W. RMS per channel.

Is my amp too powerful for those speakers?
I could go back and get another set of speakers that are rated 40 Nominal- but they would take some chopping of my interior to get them to fit.

I don't want them to sound great for 3 days then blow chunks when I go to impress my brother.

Let me know!

 

Ratings are for warranties. As long as your amp's power is CLEAN your speakers are good to go.

 

Agreed.

And max watts is a number you can pretty much ignore - amps, head units, or speakers.

 

Thanks! That's what I thought.
I searched "RMS vs Nominal" and "Continuous vs Peak Watts" and such for a few days before asking here. Crutchfield- Best Buy help- etc... But there wasn't enough info on car stereos specifically, they just say bigger, and more expensive is better- Duh!

I'll just put them in and hope for the best!

 

Distortion Kills speakers.

You could blow a speaker rated at 100 watts rms with 5 watts of distortion or clipping.

 

Well a clipped 5 watts isn't 5 watts anymore, it's considerably more. hence the "underpowering kills speakers' myth.

 

one other thing to consider is the frequency range the speaker will be playing. If you're running that 25 watt RMS speaker with 45 watts RMS, and you're running lower frequencies (ie. -bass) through that speaker, it won't last long at 75% output.

If there's a separate woofer/subwoofer in the car, you might consider using a crossover of some kind ("bass blocker", capacitor, or electronic crossover/ low pass filter in the amp) so that the low end doesn't kill the speaker.

 

That's a myth. Distortion, by itself, does not kill speakers. Exceeding thermal or mechanical limits of a speaker kills speakers. I could feed a distorted 5W signal to a 100W rated speaker all day long and there'd be no damage to the speaker.

 

Thanks guys! I installed the smaller ones they sound ok, but not worth the effort. I should have gone with bigger ones.

Arfboy-That reminded me,
I wondered about that "Distortion" from Jimi's guitar on Axis Bold as Love... I had been really into Bose 901's (back when they were the top of the line!) But my brother worked at Magnapan where they made linear speakers... anyway, he also said if the distortion is recorded, it's within the speaker limits (even at 75%!) So I've been pushing my speakers for years, but never noticed them fry because of the music. It's usually power load or shorting/clipping that will smoke mine... I've smoked my share of speakers.

Again, I should have gone with the bigger set. I wish I knew about the nominal(RMS) stuff before...
It'll only be a matter of time till these fry out, and I get another good wiff of melting speaker magnets! But then I'll get components and not worry about it

 

What speakers did you go with? What's lacking in the sound?

Yeah, distorted and even severely clipped signals will not harm a speaker until it causes the speaker to exceed its handling. I.e. if that 5W amplifier was run into clipping, it'd still be nowhere near the 100W that the speaker is rated to handle. A speaker doesn't distinguish between a clean signal and a distorted signal - it just sees a signal.

 

urggg... where to start... Well, I was starting to put together my pics today of what I have so far for a new thread when I'm finished... Here is what I have so far.

Amp board- I like to get this set-up perfect with no "wrong wiring" and triple check everything BEFORE I just drop it in the car and hook it up.

Looks Good! 200W RMS to 4 corners- 100W RMS to the sub! (400W max and 200W max respectively) Speaker wires in place, RCA's/Amps linked! All ready for a Power, Ground, and Remote-on line!

Preparing the car!
I first place a 150Amp fuse within 12" of the battery using 0-4 guage wire.

I run BOTH Positive AND Negative from the battery in through the perfect hole made for us by the good engineers at GM.

This runs through to the inside opening, where you can remove this carpeted door sill, and easily run all your wires down the side and into the back!

Powers IN~


From this head unit, I ran the RCA's and Remote line back around the steering wheel, and down the same side as before (All down the Drivers side sill!)

I ran the Sony's Keyed/Ignition/Remote switch into the console-armrest so I can put a switch in it- then to the Constant 12V wire. This is to turn the sound system on/off without using a key in the ignition.
(Sorry no pic yet! If I had one- it would go here!)

Where did I go wrong?
Here! These are 14 year old Kicker 4"s -they went in quickly, and I found out after the install- one was blown! I had also put 6x9's in the back (They were 14 years old too and hit the trash before I got any pics!)

The 4" kickers fit very well.

But I found these Pioneer sets at Circuit City's Clearance sale ($21 for the 5 1/4"s $80 for the components! -Not bad!)

Size was going to be a factor

The 5 1/4" seem to fit ok- plus they were very thin! Bad part was there 25W nominal rating.

I tried the 6 3/4" in the bose enclosure-

Not gonna happen!

Not even Close! -in order to place these in, I'd have to eliminate the Bose and make my own enclosures. Maybe later!

The dremel was used and the 5's slipped in nicely- and were shallower than the kickers (which you could feel from the grill side before!) This made me a happy camper!


Then the 6 3/4" mids went into the back, The chop job I did to get the 6x9's to fit came back to haunt me...
It fit's ok, but there still is need to fill the gaps and ported hole.


The 10" P2 Sub is rated 200W nominal 400W max- it may not look like much from the top...


But from the bottom, It puts the bass right through you!


I may have to get a bigger Rockford Fosgate Mono Amp, I'm only running Half what it can handle!
...Then I could bridge the pioneer amp and go 100W RMS per side just in the back for the components, and use the small Rockford to just power the fronts! "Woah!" but who knows...
Everything is a mess, and not totally put back together, so no pics of the finished product yet- maybe after this weekend!

Anyways, the wife came down and listened to it, and said "It sounds great! You don't need new front speakers."
Her hearing is better than mine, so I'll take her word for it... for now... I can always go bigger after I BLOW these up!

 

Ok, after trying some finer tuning, I've come up with this answer.

I was running the REAR components "full range" from the amp- because after trying LF/HF cut-offs, Full sounded the best! Same with the fronts. I turned OFF my sub- so I can fade FRONT to BACK.The first time I checked, I thought the sub turned back on! I checked- It was OFF! The Mids in the back hold their wieght in gold! Sounded great! In comparison, the front 2 ways sounded like the stock speakers of our honda- not great, but definitely lacking in clarity and volume!
So bad in fact, that I crossed over the front 2 ways to High Freq only. Then I tried to turn them up on the front channel.

I have to turn the front channel up to 75%, and the back channel BELOW 50% for them to sound "fairly" equal, because equal would be a strech of the imagination!
I'll definitely look for another set of components that will fit my front!

I'm going down in the dungeon now to start this project up again for the weekend!
God Bless!