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HOWEVER...the amp, at 200 wpc, was a bit too powerful for my speakers (Infinity reference components) and melted the mid-drivers...soooo...i replaced them with a pair of kicker components...and i melted those too (true story...honest!)
This does not seem reasonable.
There is no such thing as an amplifier "...too powerful for my speakers...". There is only playing the music louder than your speakers can handle. You could have a 50,000 watt amplifier, and it would not load the speakers any more than a 50 watt amplifier would at the same volume level. The only difference is that the gain on the big amplifier would be set much lower than on the small amplifier, but the sound level would be the same in either case.
If you are blowing speakers, it is because you are trying to get more noise out of the speakers than they can provide. You are actually more likely to damage speakers (especially in this instance) with a low power amplifier than you are with a high power amplifier, because in order to get the volume level you apparently are trying to reach, you will have to crank the gain up so high on the small amplifier that you will get clipping and distortion -- and that is what kills speakers.
Yes, you can kill a speaker with a high-powered amplifier, but it is not because the amplifier is too powerful. It is because you are using that power to play the speakers louder than they are designed to play. A speaker's rated power capacity is just a measure of how much power the speaker will draw at the maximum decibel level it is capable of playing. As long as you don't try to play the speakers louder than they can physically play, the size of the amplifier is irrelevant.
tanstaafl.
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