Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Power Handling?

I have a set of VA Beethovens, and I am powering them with a Mcintosh MC207 that is putting out close to 300wpc. The Beethovens really sound great with this amp. I just got a pair of VA Mahler speakers and should be setting them up this weekend.

I called Sumiko in Berkeley and he said not to worry about what it said on the website and that to just power them with a quality amy and you should be fine. I do know that Mcintosh amps have a "Powerguard" circuit that softens the "clipping" if you drive it to hard.

Great sounding speaker, when I close my eyes I am there....

I just listened to a set of these yesterday and was amazed with them. They were being run with a 400W Macintosh amp. During the listening session it was run into clipping on one of the louder passages of a Reference Recording CD. This did not seem to bother the speakers at all. Didn't even really sound all that ugly. I was hoping to listen to a set of the Mahlers but they were out on a demo. The guy who had them out is going to do a comparison on the Beethovens. Should be interesting.

Paul

Wattage figures like that are very rough guidelines that can do more harm than good in the wrong hands.

As far as preventing damage to speakers is concerned, you are much better off running a speaker with a very powerful amplifier that produces clean, undistorted power than with a smaller amp that can easily be pushed too hard and distort, i.e., a 500 watt/channel amp is far less likely to damage your Beethovens than a 100 watt/channel amp that is overdriven into distortion.

In this regard, the real danger to audiophile speakers comes from using them with home theater receivers and other <$500 mass-market amps -- the power supplies in those things are garbage and they distort easily, producing heat in the speaker cones that can burn out voice coils.