Thinking about purchasing R700

Andons27

Hello everyone! I'm considering purchasing these speakers, but I have an Emotiva Xpa amp. It's rated at 490 watts per channel at 4ohms, but the polk r700 require 50-300 watts. Will these devices be compatible together?

nooshinjohn

yes.

Emlyn

It is possible that a pair of speakers can have their drivers overheat if the speakers are driven continuously at too high a volume for too long a period of time, but it's rarely caused by an amplifier having too much dynamic output power in a residential setting unless someone is deliberately abusing their speakers by doing something like setting them up outdoors and using them as if they're at an outdoor AC/DC concert. Speakers actually pull far less power from an amp in normal operation like listening to music than the amp can actually provide under optimum test conditions.

The recommended amplifier power output range for almost any speaker company is just a suggested range. It's more likely that the R700s would melt down with an amplifier rated below 50 watts per channel than it would with an amplifier rated above 300 watts per channel. The reason for that is called "clipping" which causes distortion and potential damage to speaker drivers when the amplifier can't deliver enough continuous power to the speakers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipping_(audio)

Andons27

Thanks for the response. Can you explain how? I figured they could overheat and get ruined...

Andons27

That was a very detailed response thank you! Learned something new, which is invaluable.