[Reynolds853]

I just ordered a set of 225's and anxiously await their arrival.  I will be a first time AVA buyer.  Congratulations on the killer reviews!

I am not used to seeing fuses for speaker outputs.  Today, I run a 500W integrated and have really enjoyed the seemingly limitless power.  I am well within the range of the amp, even when playing concert level rock/jazz in a (mid-sized room <10ft listening distance).  No risk of compression or clipping the speakers (ears, maybe).  It has been my experience that having too little power places greater risk of speaker damage than too much.  (Speakers are B&W 804 D3;  50-200w; 89db).  I was able to damage a set of 804 (monitors) with a quality 100W amp with no audible clipping.  Sad day. 

That said.  I was wondering why fuse the speakers? Does the protect against potential clipping? 

"Our SET amplifiers are uniquely DC stable. This means they will not generate speaker damaging DC drift even when driven past clipping."

Wondering about the general behavior of these amps if pushed to their limits.  I hope not to reach the limits but in the case I do, replacement drivers on the 804's can be as high as $1500 each.  Yikes!

[avahifi]

Why built in speaker fuses?

Because fuses are less expensive and easier to replace then woofers and/or power transistors.

Fuses are bad is just another audiophlake dumb idea.

Note that our astonishing M225 mono amp uses plain old  non-audiophile speaker fuses.  Nobody seems to mind them.

Frank

[Reynolds853]

Thank you for the reply, Frank.  I was not suggesting there was a problem with having fuses - quite the contrary.  I was simply curious if they are really an insurance policy against smoking a driver. 

I'm not an EE by any stretch, but it makes sense that if the speaker dropped too low in impedance or fried a voice coil, that could create real problems for the amp - great to have a fuse to limit damage to the amp.  However, I don't see how it would protect a driver given that you don't know what the thermal capacity of the driver is.  My speakers are rated to 200w continuous.  They are rated at 8ohms.  The reality is they are closer to 6 most of the time and dip to 3 at one point.

Your site mentions "DC stability not producing speaker damaging drift."  Not sure if that means the amps clip "more softly" and thus reduces the likelihood of frying a driver.  Just trying to understand the potential for that to happen.   As mentioned, my current amp has so much headroom, clipping is not a threat.  Since the 225 has about half the headroom of my current amp, I was not sure if that is something I need to concern myself with. 

Thanks for your thoughts.

[WGH]

I was simply curious if they are really an insurance policy against smoking a driver. 

Definitely yes. An output tube in one channel of my previous preamp went real bad at startup and blasted full volume noise into a speaker. It didn't last long, the speaker fuse in my AVA amp blew. A new tube and a fuse from Ace hardware fixed everything with no damage done.