Home Receiver Help?

Question

I am buying a Receiver for my home theater setup, My speakers are a bit older but they still sound amazing and seem to be the best option for my money right now (nothing has blown me away on a <$100 budget). They are older aiwa speakers with 6 ohlms of resistance and 60w rating. I am wondering if it is going to be a problem for me to buy a sony amplifier with 4 or 8 ohlms impedance and 80w rating.

Here is the amp: http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/model-home.pl?mdl=STRDE635&LOC=3

Answer 1

Hi. You should have no problem using the Sony Receiver with your Aiwa speakers. It is always better to have more power output than speaker input.as long as you don't turn the volume up to a ridiculous level which could damage the speakers.But it is worse if you try to supply the speakers with more power than the amplifier can deliver.which can send gross distortion to the speakers possibly damaging both amp. and speakers.

Answer 2

GOOD QUESTION!

I would discourage you from buying a Sony receiver. In the 20+ years I've been designing and installing home theaters, I've never met a Sony receiver I liked.

Am I a snob? Is it just a subjective quirk?

No. Sony does not build good receivers for the money. They always have SOMEthing derfy about them. ("Derfy" means that they're either counterintuitive to set up and/or run). But more importantly, unless you can afford the Sony's ES line, you're getting an amplifier design that is no better than Pioneer, Technics, or Emerson. Seriously.

For a relative buck or two more, you could buy a slightly lower wattage Denon, Yamaha, Onkyo, Harman/Kardon or Marantz receiver - the BIG difference in these brands is that they rely less on "watts per channel" and more on "capacitance".

Capacitance is the ability of an amp to rely on reserve power. When the action gets BIG, and the explosions are going off all over the place (or that heavy metal riff gets really heavy), THAT'S when wattage alone isn't going to cut it, but capacitance will.

This is one of the lesser known "inside" bits of information that the retail world never manages to communicate effectively to the shopper. Partly because a lot of dweebs working there don't care to know, but also because they HAVE to move that stack of Sony receivers sitting in the warehouse this week or else Ms. Manager is going to get on salesstaff's case bigtime.

SO, what to do? If you can't afford a new Yamaha receiver with 60 watts per channel (but higher capacitance, remember) maybe you should consider used on CraigsList... I dunno.

I DO know actually: spend you money wisely and look at the brands I mentioned beofre you waste it on a Sony receiver.

I'm not knocking the name, don't get me wrong. Sony TVs? GREAT! DVD players? GREAT! Receivers? Not so great.

That is all.

Good luck and let me know how you made out.

Answer 3

You will be fine with those speakers. Because of the crossover system that cuts the bass from all other speakers and feeds the sub with it, your speakers (which I assume you will be using for your front L & R) will not be pressed with the total available power of the amp.