BEOVOX S45-2 (T6312)

I acquired a pair of these speakers and want to use them for my living room 2.1 setup.  A few questions:  Is there anywhere I could find stands for these?  Right now I have them on the floor and I know that isn't optimal.  Secondly, would the S45-2's work with this audio receiver?  I don't want to overpower the speakers and risk blowing them.  Finally, how can I get new speaker wire for these speakers?  I noticed there is some type of adapter (2-pin?) that plugs the speaker wire into the back of the S45-2's.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Welcome to Beoworld!

I wouldn't risk the speakers with that amplifier, you would be feeding 140W to a speaker designed for about 40W. Speaker stands appear on eBay from time to time. Without stands the speakers are often very satisfactory wall mounted or lying on bookcase shelves. You need 2 pin DIN plugs for the cables: Strve at SoundsHeavenly can help if you can't find B&O cables (that are actually a little like bell wire but pefectly satisfactory!)

Graham.

You can use this amp, not at max volume, but it will work just fine.

It is not about the numbers (watt) but about usage. You will drive them at normal levels at just a few Watts actually.

Could you elaborate on this just a bit?  I'm getting conflicting information.  So your saying as long as I don't run them at max volume they should be fine?  How do I know what volume might be too high?

Kallasr is right.... you could use the amp if you were careful to keep the volume turned down. But could you be sure? Supposing someone else decided to run everything at maximum volume? I wouldn't risk it unless I could be certain that no one else in the household or a visitor wouldn't turn it up.

Graham

Just how high are we talking?  I like to listen at a fairly loud level, but never MAXED out.  Is the only concern if the amp is turned all the way up?

My near identical mk1 S45's are fine with my 1970's BM2000 (30W) and Olive One (32W). They are very loud well below max volume. 

You could experiment and put some sort of stop onto the volume control or attenuate the output in some other way. Maybe someone here with a technical background can tell you how to do that.

Graham

It's not quite as straighforward as this though (things never are, are they!)

There's a general misconception that if you have say a speaker rated at 40 Watts continuous, and you connect it to a 30 Watt amplifier, you can never damage the speaker.

The problem is, as soon as you reach the maximum output levels within any of the amplifier stages, the signal starts to clip and a much higher proportion of the power passes through the high pass section of the speakers crossover and ends up at the tweeter (rather than being directed to the mid range or woofer as would originally have occurred) and so the tweeter goes pop and is destroyed.

Clipping is the type of distortion we are most used to hearing when we turn things up too loud (especially battery powered devices).

Take the same 40W rated speaker, and connect them to say an 80W amplifier, and then even when turned up to say 60 Watts output, whilst you are exceeding the rated power handling of the speaker, you no longer have a clipped and distorted signal, so it is being distributed between the drivers in a normal fashion and the speaker drivers would tend to survive for much longer than in the previous case.

Ultimately one or more driver might still blow, or the varnish on the coils would melt, but in most case the speakers would sound pretty horrendous at this level so you would have an opportunity to reduce the volume before this happened.

This type of distortion (from the speakers, rather than clipping of the amps) is usually as a result of the cones reaching their full extension (they can't move in and out as far as you are asking them to) and sounds more like 'fffft fffft' sounds - imagine a dog tied to a post running full pelt in one direction until he reaches the end of his rope (thus coming to an abrupt stop), then doing exactly the same in the opposite direction - this is what your speaker cones end up doing when they are over-driven, not good for them, but they will tolerate this for longer than a tweeter will tolerate being sent a mass of clipped bass/midrange.

Bottom line? Connect them to that amp if you wish, be sensible with your volume levels, if you start to hear the drivers being overdriven turn it down until that stops and then turn it down some more, but at more normal listening levels your tweeters will likely be happier than they would be with a small amp being pushed to its limits.

Kind Regards,

Martin.