"notme" wrote in message
...
hello everyone i am in a lucky position as a relative left me all his
gear(before he departed for other shores) amplifiers with valves in
them the biggest being a beard 100, leak tl20, musical fidelity with
huge black knobs and separate power,scott 299, quad 2,quad33/303
(which i am using at the moment). although i have been mostly into my
ipod and its plugin amplifier, i can now hear a huge difference with
the records/cds he also left. he has used for years a pr of monitor
audio 352s and one of them has recently developed a rasping sound,
sorry to go on this brings me to my question as i am out of my dept
here.i have been looking around ebay etc fo a replacement pr of more
up to date speakers, i like the look of other monitor
audios,splendors,bo etc , in the specification it might have (for
amplifiers of at least 25 watts) i am a bit puzzled about this the
lowest power amplifier (leak tl20) i think is 10 w1tts and when i have
hocked it up to the 352 i have to be conscious of the neighbours, if
10 watts is that loud 25 watts would rightly have the neighbours
complaining, at the same time would like to have a nice sounding
speaker that i can match with the different amplifiers from time to
time. i have also a average size through lounge in a terraced house,
would the splendor/ monitor audio bests be too big or would they give
the range if needed. i want to make the right decision and dont want
to be changing to the latest model all the time
dilemma suggestions would be welcome

Apparently your style of posting has rattled a few cages......

There is no dilemma. The R352's were "Best Buys" of the 80's being
home turf products thus over-priced and nothing special.
It's been covered in other replies but watts are just numbers.
You could do a search on the subject, but speakers "represent a load"
to the amp, start with the search term: "Ampere's law".

The "load" will be badged up as something along the lines:
"Nominal 8ohms" or similar, But thats just a figure based on one set
of measurements to appease some marketiing requirement or other.
The "impedance trend" in the real world could bounce or dip, it's
just an "averaged" figure, which is not representative of real world
usage.
The sensitivity claim is again a figure supposedly to represent how
loud a speaker will go for 1 watt at one metre using one tone to
compare against rivals etc. In the space time continuum well it is
figures Jim, but not as we know it ..... In the real world.
There is no mystery about how speakers work, though there are
important factors to consider, we could go along the road of long
throw, frequency range, paper/fibre/metel cones blah blah blah.
But in your case if your current crop of ancient amps had no problem
pumping the amprers into the R352's then modern efficient units
will dance driven by the same amps.
If you like the look of the MA cabinets and want savings on shipping
costs for bulky boxes, then do what I suggested elsewhere in this
thread, replace the drive units, it's simple, all drive units are shaped
and sized to set standards.
You only have to be concerned with "matching" sensitivity of drives.
A variable crossover will be to discern what lumps of the bandwidth
is fed to which drive unit, - tweeter and woofer.
It's no mystery, it is sod all to do with how much they cost or who
gives what a best buy. You can do it yourself with spectacular results
all for approx 70 quid.

Do a search on following terms:
speaker impedance
speaker sensitivity
speaker efficiency
speaker sound pressure level (SPL)
speaker crossover
Here is a whole pile of video's about speakers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jr9QH0t3h4
http://www.youtube.com/results?searc...dspeakers&aq=f