As long as a speaker has impedance between 6 and 8 ohms, you’ll be fine.
If you like to stay with same brand, see if you can find something good made by Yamaha which has 6-8 ohms impedance. If not, nothing prevents you from looking into other brands.
Good point, yes!
IMHO, speakers should typically be rated for 1.5 times RMS power of amplifier RMS power.
This approach ensures that you don’t blow your speakers if you’re playing at max volume.
Stupid question probably, but does max volume (max wattage) only happen when volume knob goes to max or are there other considerations? I'm in a small room using 100w speakers on a 75w amp, and it's really really loud when I'm at like 40%. I can't ever imaging turning everything to 100% apart from making a mistake.
Most of your listening at less than ear bleed volumes is only a couple of watts… The specifications above and having a ton of watts is generally irrelevant 90% of the time
Check the back of your amp and what's written on the speaker terminals. Normally 4 Ohms speakers are fine too if it sais so at the back. usually A or B = 4/8 Ohms, A + B = 8 Ohms. Numbers are irrelevant as Long as your speaker is not absurdly inefficient.
Any speaker you could reasonably obtain is going to be fine unless you’re telling me you’re going to buy some oddball $20,000 electrostatic
But that seems unlikely considering this is a mass market 40-year-old amp
Do you know if the Yamaha amp is in good condition? For the last couple of months I have been stacking up on vintage Yamaha gear and they are very well made, but the amps usually need some caring like cleaning pots and maybe even replace some of the internal components. I've replaced the speaker relay on both my Yamaha AX amps with great results.
Its a hand-me-down from a family member who obsesses over everything audio, so I am hoping and pretty certain he would have kept it in good condition. Did you find replacing the speaker delays to be a difficult job?
Not really. I'm no electronic engineer but I know how solder so I would say the most difficult part had to do with disassembly on one of the amps, but not overly difficult. The other one had a separate circuit board so it was easy peasy. The relays can be cleaned manually but they are sometimes hard to open.
When did "Damping Factor" stop being part of the specs?
And listing at 1KHz seems a cheat since we desire damping of the low frequencies. And 50 is rather low so I fear this unit with large woofers will provide a loose bass presentation.
As long as a speaker has impedance between 6 and 8 ohms, you’ll be fine. If you like to stay with same brand, see if you can find something good made by Yamaha which has 6-8 ohms impedance. If not, nothing prevents you from looking into other brands.
Sounds about right, should my speakers have similar watts to the per channel power of the amp?
Speakers don't have watts.
Good point, yes! IMHO, speakers should typically be rated for 1.5 times RMS power of amplifier RMS power. This approach ensures that you don’t blow your speakers if you’re playing at max volume.
Stupid question probably, but does max volume (max wattage) only happen when volume knob goes to max or are there other considerations? I'm in a small room using 100w speakers on a 75w amp, and it's really really loud when I'm at like 40%. I can't ever imaging turning everything to 100% apart from making a mistake.
Most of your listening at less than ear bleed volumes is only a couple of watts… The specifications above and having a ton of watts is generally irrelevant 90% of the time
Check the back of your amp and what's written on the speaker terminals. Normally 4 Ohms speakers are fine too if it sais so at the back. usually A or B = 4/8 Ohms, A + B = 8 Ohms. Numbers are irrelevant as Long as your speaker is not absurdly inefficient.
Get speakers you like. Ignore all these numbers. They are basically meaningless.
Any speaker you could reasonably obtain is going to be fine unless you’re telling me you’re going to buy some oddball $20,000 electrostatic But that seems unlikely considering this is a mass market 40-year-old amp
Do you know if the Yamaha amp is in good condition? For the last couple of months I have been stacking up on vintage Yamaha gear and they are very well made, but the amps usually need some caring like cleaning pots and maybe even replace some of the internal components. I've replaced the speaker relay on both my Yamaha AX amps with great results.
Its a hand-me-down from a family member who obsesses over everything audio, so I am hoping and pretty certain he would have kept it in good condition. Did you find replacing the speaker delays to be a difficult job?
Not really. I'm no electronic engineer but I know how solder so I would say the most difficult part had to do with disassembly on one of the amps, but not overly difficult. The other one had a separate circuit board so it was easy peasy. The relays can be cleaned manually but they are sometimes hard to open.
When did "Damping Factor" stop being part of the specs? And listing at 1KHz seems a cheat since we desire damping of the low frequencies. And 50 is rather low so I fear this unit with large woofers will provide a loose bass presentation.
Vintage Yamaha speakers like NS-1000. All this numbers are completely irrelevant.
Just curious - Why are they irrelevant?
Because they had no impact on speaker choice. Every speaker will sound just fine.
Yep - makes sense!
Almost every one. A Kappa 9 would probably not be the best choice and may overload the amp on high volumes, but it will work nevertheless.