I am looking for a receiver, this one says it has 100 watts of power per channel. I currently have two 100 watt speakers, will they work with this?
THIS IS THE ADD FOR THE SYSTEM I AM LOOKING AT>
Packed with 100 watts of power per channel, Sony's STR-DE185 Receiver will rock your listening room with riveting sound. Features include a New Hi-Fi Design that will complement your components, a 5-function input selector, Frequency synthesis AM/FM tuning with 30 presets, Discrete output transistors, and a Sleep Timer. The supplied UniCommander Remote Control will allow you to manage your music with ease as you witness the superb sound of Sony technology at work.

 

Those speakers should work, but its hard to say without knowing the brand of speakers and model# of them. On the other hand, that receiver is Sony's low end and should accomodate almost any two speaker setup. If you are thinking of going with a full 5.1 surround system, look at Onkyo, Denon, or Yamaha receivers. They tend to have more power per channel with less distortion.

Stuntman

 

Those speakers should be fine. The power figure from Sony is a high number, anyway, as its peak and not continuous. Its rare you'll get that much power at any given time.

The three brands mentioned by stuntman will blow the doors off the sony. Onkyo and Denon quote power in continuous watts, a more reliable and truer number.

 

Thanks Guys, I was leaning toward an Onkyo TXSR303 which says 65 watts per channel and I guess I should stay in that direction. I know nothing about this stuff and was swayed by the price. My speakers are Omni 100watt Outdoor that I got from ebay. I have this system outside with the omnis in a flower bed and will be adding other speakers as I can afford to. The Omnis are 100 watt, will they work ok with the 65 watt onkyo and what wattage speakers should I use for the other ones later on or should I look at getting a 100 watt system?
I guess you could say I am electronically challanged when it comes to this stuff so I really appreciate your help.

 

Watts peak is just as important as Watts RMS. I also highly doubt you will ever be putting 100W out to these speakers to begin with that is pretty darn loud. Your speakers will more than like start to distort the sound anyways when you get them that loud. They just mean that the speakers will not burn up or blow apart at 100W, the sound out will probably be so bad you won't be able to understand what is coming out, so you will turn it down till the down till the sound is clear again.

Also you remember when there was those little lights that would light up the row with the sound, or the needles. When the sound hits loud really quick and that flies all the way over that a test of your watts peak. Where they are when they seem to be in the middle would make the RMS measurement reflect more accurately. If your music is always in the red or has the needle peg your hitting the rail or attempting to exceed the output of the amp and your music will be all distorted no matter what speakers you have hooked.

 

This is what is on the ONKYO TXSR303 I am now looking at. What does the Dynamic Power ** and ohms mean?

Power Specifications
Power Output* (8 ohm, 20 Hz-20 kHz, FTC) 65 W
Front L/R 65 W/Ch
Center 65 W
Surround L/R 65 W/Ch
Surround Back 65 W
Dynamic Power** -
3 ohm (Front) 160 W
4 ohm (Front) 125 W
8 ohm (Front) 85 W

Thanks for your patients.

 

What they are referring to is the ohms of the speaker and the power you can expect from the reciever because of its current voltage rails.

As you increase speaker resistance you also increase sound quality, but you are reducing the total power the receiver can put out. You terminate your signal better on the speakers with high ohm speakers. This is because the resistance of the wire becomes less important (the reason you see all the crazy types of wire out). If you do not have extremely high quality really really expensive speakers you most likely won't be able to tell the difference on sound quality but you will notice a difference in how loud they can get. I am assuming that receiver may have been impedance matched at 8ohms, which is why they have the one rating up higher. Or they could have just tested that and used equations to list the other power ratings.

That is why your ratings very depending on the resistance of the coil. dynamically the impedance of the coil is changing with the frequency of the sound out. so just ohmage is used as the base for ratings.

In order to get more power out of the receiver with higher ohm speaker the voltage rails would have to be higher. The power of the amp would increase by a factor of 4 if the designers doubled the rail voltage.

P=(I^2)xR so as you drop or raise resistance current goes up or down quicker as to why the power does to and your receiver can only put out so much current before it will shut down. That is why some people wonder why they parralel a bunch of speakers(lower total resistance) and then crank it up and the amp shuts down after 5min or so