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Yamaha M-65 amp to much for Quartets?


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170 watts per channel?  Don’t worry about it.  As long as you don’t do anything silly with the volume control you’ll be fine.  I ran original La Scalas for a year with a 500 watts per channel Yamaha MX-D1 power amp, then the next year they were bi-amped with a pair of MX-D1s.  That combo ran for 5 years, then the La Scalas were replaced with La Scala IIs in the same setup.  That was in 2013.  The LS2s are still running happily with 1,000 watts per channel (500 watts available to the tweeters and 500 watts available to the woofers).  The key word is available.  That doesn’t represent the power that’s usually being driven through them, which is likely just a few watts at most, because of the very high sensitivity of the La Scalas.  More power is used for loud transients, of course, but that’s for split seconds, when a very loud or very sudden (a drumbeat, for example) signal is sent to the speakers.  Those brief notes don’t last long enough to overheat the drivers, so they’re harmless.

 

Live music frequently contains brief transients that are much louder than the rest of the music.  The challenge for home audio systems is to reproduce those sounds accurately, since that contributes to the realism of the experience.  That’s where the “extra” power comes in.  It’s sometimes called “headroom”, since it’s over and above what’s needed most of the time, but it’s very useful, and even needed, for those very short very loud sounds, like handclaps at close range for example.

 

What about when you really like the sound of an amplifier, but it seems to have more, or even much more, power than you think you need?  No problem.  If you really like the sound of an amplifier, but it doesn’t seem to have the power you need, you do have a problem.  Part of this depends on what kinds of music you usually listen to and how loudly you like to listen to it.  If you listen to acoustic folk or chamber music at low volume, and you have fairly sensitive speakers, you don’t need much power.  Change any one of those three conditions, and you need more power to give you a realistic listening experience.  

 

Also, the size of the room and its condition of “liveness” or “deadness” comes into it.  So, when in doubt, it’s better to have more power, because then you have the flexibility to be able to listen to any kind of music at any volume in any size or kind of room.  One last thing.  As I recently commented somewhere else, audio equipment manufacturers tend to lavish their best engineering and best components on their most expensive, i.e. most powerful amplifiers.  For this reason, the more powerful amplifiers may sound better than the lower powered ones, even at the same volume.  Relax and enjoy your M-65 amplifier!

 

What happened to the original La Scalas?  I moved them behind the sofa and armchair, where they serve as the Surround speakers, powered by 80-100 watts from the Surround channels of the AV receiver.  I got them in 2006, so they’ve been entertaining me for 16 years now.

 

 

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12 hours ago, Wishihadklipsch said:

No. For sale in my area. 

 

Go for it before it’s gone!  Well, check it out carefully before you hand over the cash, of course, like are there any visible or audible signs of abuse, and equally important, do you like how it sounds?  Keep in mind that the owner most likely has a room and a stereo that’s somewhat different from what you have, so you won’t be 100% sure until you get it home and connected to your system, and then listen for a few weeks, but that applies to any amplifier or other component that you buy, new or used.  Check out any reviews you can find, but there should be no problem due to the power of the M-65 amplifier.

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I have a 460wpc Carver amp on a pair of Epic CF-3's with nary and issue and it sees the meters bounce quite high on occasion.  I even ran that amp on my Belle clones at one time.  Probably sounded the best of any amp I'd ran on them. Probably the reason why it's the only amp I've kept.  

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On 5/24/2022 at 8:25 AM, Wishihadklipsch said:

Would a Yamaha M-65 amp be to much power for my Quartets? 

M-65 is rated at 170watts. 

TIA

 

 

Great sounding series of Yamaha Amps

Take it for a tune up before putting it into service

Set the Gain controls at 12 O'Clock High

so that you have a smoother increase in volume from your pre amp

Given the age, a recap may be in order

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On 5/24/2022 at 9:25 AM, Wishihadklipsch said:

Would a Yamaha M-65 amp be to much power for my Quartets? 

 

Quartets are rated at 100 wpc , 170wpc meaning distortion is practically avoided   ,  the bass is solid , the HF is crystal clear .

 

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Be careful with too much power.  Most amps are not as beefy as they claim, so if you get an amp that is way above the power rating of your speakers and can actually put out the power you can do some damage. 

 

I saw this with a pair of Classe monoblocks that are 700 wpc at 4 ohms and can actually put out that much power. They distorted the woofers on some inefficient but expensive speakers.  All four woofers had to be replaced at a big cost. 

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5 minutes ago, tigerwoodKhorns said:

Be careful with too much power.  Most amps are not as beefy as they claim, so if you get an amp that is way above the power rating of your speakers and can actually put out the power you can do some damage. 

 

I saw this with a pair of Classe monoblocks that are 700 wpc at 4 ohms and can actually put out that much power. They distorted the woofers on some inefficient but expensive speakers.  All four woofers had to be replaced at a big cost. 

I've blown more tweeters with lower power than high power. 

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Just now, CWOReilly said:

I've blown more tweeters with lower power than high power. 

Yes, not enough power causes square waves that can blow a tweeter and that is what usually blows.

 

But there is common advice given that you never have to worry about too much clean power.  This is not really true.  If you have a serious amp and drive the speakers with too much clean power the speakers can be damaged. 

 

My friend learned this the hard way.  Lots of bass, sounded great but after he stopped listening, the woofers were not blown, but the cones were badly distorted.  They looked like polymer or composite cones and were very expensive to replace.   The amps weighed a lot and the transformers were about 8" in diameter.  Serious amps, I had a pair too but drove speakers designed to consume a huge amount of power. 

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52 minutes ago, tigerwoodKhorns said:

Yes, not enough power causes square waves that can blow a tweeter and that is what usually blows.

 

But there is common advice given that you never have to worry about too much clean power.  This is not really true.  If you have a serious amp and drive the speakers with too much clean power the speakers can be damaged. 

 

My friend learned this the hard way.  Lots of bass, sounded great but after he stopped listening, the woofers were not blown, but the cones were badly distorted.  They looked like polymer or composite cones and were very expensive to replace.   The amps weighed a lot and the transformers were about 8" in diameter.  Serious amps, I had a pair too but drove speakers designed to consume a huge amount of power. 

Just gotta know when to say when. I have a pair of <ahem> Polk SDA SRS that are rated to 1000 watts. I can’t even imagine it. 220 is more than enough. 

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