Blasting the 340's and 170's

[Johnal]

My current setup includes three 340's and two 170's with an SVS PC-Ultra sub and an HK7200 receiver. I just got my 170's on Monday and my sub just came yesterday so calibration is on my mind. (I've had the 340's for a little over a year now and love them.) Well, as I was using the test tones from the receiver I had the volume at 00 as was suggested to do. Right as I had reached a balance that I was really getting into, my cat jumps onto my bed and steps on the remote's play button for my CD player. Oh...my...god. The music was so loud and the sub was just pumping away I felt like my head was going to explode. I LOVE to listen to my music plenty loud and feel the shake from a good movie but the Ascends were loud, crystal clear, and didn't distort one bit! It was a bigger rush than I get from any of rides at Disneyland that's for sure! I thought i may have blown a speaker out or two just because it was so loud but I tested them out again about 20 minutes later (after recovering from the incident) and they sounded fine. I've never had a blown out speaker or damaged a speaker for that matter but I guess I can only hope I didn't do any damage. (Any way to check this by the way?) I just had to say that these speakers are amazing...even though they almost made me cry today.

-Johnal

[Eddie Horton]

The HK you have puts out a lot of juice, and since feeding a speaker with an underpowered, clipped signal will do more damage than just about anything, I wouldn't worry about it. Especially if the Ascends were crossed over to the sub (I'm assuming they were), then they were playing in their sweet spot and didn't have to try to reproduce low bass tones. If they still sound fine, then no harm no foul.