I think the most important thing is to understand that
speaker power ratings represent the
power the
speaker is rated to handle and not the amount of
power that is required or necessarily appropriate for any particular use. Most of the 'rule of thumb' guidelines come from rental/staging type applications where the goal is to have a
system that could be applied to the widest range of applications. Installed systems are a
bit different as they typically have a more defined application or range of applications and thus can be approached with more of a focus on the requirements for those particular uses.
There are many other factors involved. For example, you could have a
speaker that changes significantly in response before experiencing any catastrophic failure. Some people test
speaker power handling based on there being any noticeable (+/-3dB) change in the response, a situation from which the
speaker can usually recover. Others test to failure and you have no idea of what that failure was or whether it was temporary or
terminal. Some manufacturers use different test signals. There is effort underway to try to resolve some of these issues and develop a 'better' testing standard, but trying to get something that all manufacturers will agree to is difficult. One significant problem is that such testing procedures would likely result in much lower
power ratings for many products and make products tested under the new standards potentially look bad when compared to products tested under one of the
current standards. The worst part of this is that nothing would legally prevent anyone from reporting data using the old methods, resulting in the common dilemma of what is technically better conflicting with what may be better for sales.
On the d&b speakers, the problem is that d&b approaches many of their products as a
system, you use their speakers with their amplifiers that have
speaker system specific processing integrated into them. There are a number of potential advantages to this approach but one impact is that the data for some of their products is predicated on that approach. With the T10, instead of a sensitivity they specify the maximum output when used with the d&b D6 and D12 amplifiers. You might be able to back into the sensitivity from that output
level, the
speaker impedance and the
amplifier ratings. Or you could contact d&b directly and see if they have that data, they are usually very helpful.
just my luck. So my question is would it be alright to run a 350 watt speaker off a 300 watt amp? if so it will save me £100!!! Would the sound quality and output of the speaker be afected by underpowering it?
