MOSFET problems (need a hi-fi techy!)

I'm not educated in the actual electronics but do have experience speaker wise:

Speakers have a wattage rating and and good ones offer an efficiency rating. The efficiency rating tells a consumer how loud a speaker should play given a certain input value.

So, from memory it reads something like:

1 watt of input (such as pink noise or 'prrrrrrrrrrrrfffffft' to you and me) should generate around 86 to 102 decibels - db, depending on the speaker design.

The average home amplifer set up, to raise the roof, barely uses 5 - 11 watts depending on the speakers' efficiency.

How an amplifier delivers this depends on its power supply. Many cheapy amps used to be sold with '1000w PMPO' peak maximum power output, just before the amp goes 'futt' - in real money, these 1000w amps were barely 50w at best with weedy power supplies.

So, given your amp is struggling to power two sets of speakers simultaneously, I'd venture that the bookshelf speakers are pretty hard to drive and dont go as loud as the more efficient floor standers. The difficult loads also mean that the speakers are drawing much more current from the amp's power supply than it can manage, hence the heat and subsequent failure.

It is much easier to damage speakers by under driving them than it is to use a massive amplifier. Weedy amps clip early on and send out spurious voltages that fry the speaker coils, usually the tweeters die first.

Amplifiers also have power outputs depending on the impedance of the speaker such as 30w into 8 ohm, 45w into 6 ohm and 60w into 4 ohm - this is because the lower the impedance of the speaker, the more current it draws from the amplifier, the amplifier has to work hard to power the speakers. So your 2 ohm combined load really gives the amplifier something to do, especially at high volumes.

So from your recent post you should be looking for speakers with 8 ohms and a high efficiency rating which will make two pairs easy to drive.

Hope this rambling helps!

Time for a new amp or a rethink of your speakers.
 
looking at the specifications of the Alpha 5, it supplies a maximum of 50w into an 8 ohm load.

so, running it into two sets of speakers splits that 50w per chan into the equivalent of 25w per channel. Then your 2 ohm load is trying to draw off as much as the equivalent of 100w out of this 'little' amplifier! Its drawing a lot of current making everything work harder than it should.

For you needs, I would recommend an amplifier rated at at least 80w minimum, 120W for best performance.

Bigger amplification usually carries the bonus of better sound quality too. The bigger power supplies help an amplifier cope with big transients in music, classical music can make an amp work really hard, going from quiet to sudden loud parts really makes an amps power supply work really hard.
 
bojangle":3tqtuz9k said:
Can you get speakers with lower impedance? :?

i've looked everywhere for some and the best i can find is 6ohms!

The amp is a four channel amp, so is designed for two sets of speakers.

The amp has plenty of air movement around it, and is not under or on top of anything else hot! I might be being dumb/ignorant/uneducated (delete as applicable) but isn't it just a case of matching the output of the amp to the speakers e.g if if output of speakers is 100w then the amp should run at least this?

I think you misunderstand; as I explained above, if you want to drive 4 speakers with this amplifier they need to be higher impedance not lower!! i.e. each of the 4 need to be between 8 and 16 Ohms. This amplifier is actually a dual drive (stereo) with enough capacity to drive 4 loads provided total loading goes no lower than 4 Ohms.

If you replace the MOSFETs the amp will be fine if you only drive 2 of your current speakers with it. Not 4!! Total load impedance is calculated by Product over Sum.

Your other options are replace the amp for one that can drive lower loads, or replace your speakers to higher impedance ones, again product over sum no lower than 4 Ohms!!

Hope this helps :-)
 
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