Will the 300 be too much for me?

[zonka]

Hi - I'm using my Marantz sr5012 as a pre amp running KEF Q100s and an SVS sub. The suggested wattage on the KEFs is 10-100 watts. I bought the 150 (hasn't arrived yet) but now I'm wondering if i shouldn't have purchased the 300 instead but worried about it being too powerful.
Any thoughts/opinions would be much appreciated:)

Thanks

[mshump]

You should be fine with the A-150. Yes the A-300 would give you a little more headroom. You can have a higher wattage amp and wont hurt them unless you are listening at stupid levels.


Mark

[zonka]

Aug 1, 2017 10:34:03 GMT -5 mshump said:

You should be fine with the A-150. Yes the A-300 would give you a little more headroom. You can have a higher wattage amp and wont hurt them unless you are listening at stupid levels.


Mark

Thanks for the reply. Is headroom a good thing? Will it give me a purer sound if the amp isn't driven as hard? I don't listen at crazy levels but it is in a fairly big, carpeted room (great room plus kitchen with vaulted ceilings).

Thanks

[mshump]

Yes headroom is good. When listening at a normal level if the music or movie etc hits a tough passage or say explosion etc, then you need that extra power from the amp to reproduce that.


Mark

[garbulky]

Don't worry about "too much amp". More speakers are damaged by weak underpowered amps that clip and fry the tweeters. However there is a caveat that you can't be silly with it and crank it to maximum for hours on end ignoring obvious sounds of distress from a speaker. That will damage the voice coil. But fwiw, I run my 400 watt speakers with 1000 watt amps. I've also run 30 watt speakers with 1000 watt amps. No problems.