Because of the low power of your receiver, the thing you need to concentrate on is the sensitivity rating of the speakers you buy. If the rating is too low, the speakers will need more power than you have for decent performance and the result will be poor sound.

Get some that are rated 90 db/watt or higher. The Dali Zensor are great speakers, but their low sensitivity of 86 db/watt rules them out in your case. The Elac UB5 are even worse, at 85 db/watt! The Klipsch speakers are more sensitive, but IMO their sound quality is poor.

The Monitor Audio Bronze 2 would be perfect for you; they sound really great and are rated at 90 db/watt. They are available from Audio Advisor and other online retailers for $499 or less per pair.

Note that the sensitivity ratings are logorithmic, so each 3db lower represents a doubling of power required. This means that the Dali Zensor, for example, would need around 70-80 watts per channel.

By the way are you sure your speakers died, or did your receiver die? Try connecting some other speakers to your receiver and make sure it works.

plantgrrl wrote:

Hey guys, So my husband doesn't understand my love of sound. He's had the same stereo receiver since 1993 and will listen to any spare pair of headphones I've given him from my reject drawer. So up until now I've kept my speaker habits to headphones only. But an opportunity presented itself recently when the speakers on our home stereo died, and I'm just a little overwhelmed trying to parse the whole Ohms/Watts/Volts business of speakers and receivers.

I've got $500 to work with for the speakers and an existing Sony STR-D159 Stereo Receiver (circa 1993) to hook them up to. I just want a decent pair of bookshelf speakers, no sub, no home theater system. I've been looking at a bargain on the Klipsch RP-600M or ELAC Uni-fi UB5 or DALI Zensor 1. I just want to make sure I don't go and buy the speakers and they are either over or underpowered for the receiver.

What I've found for receiver specs from the internet is:

power output: 25 watts per channel into 6-ohms (stereo)
Frequency response: 40Hz to 20 kHz
Total harmonic distortion: 0.5%
Input sensitivity: 3mV (MM), 300mV (line)
Speaker load impedance: 6-ohms to 16-ohms

And if I understood those numbers better, than I wouldn't be here. LOL

Am I over thinking this whole thing and any of these speakers would work with this receiver?

Oh...lol...I guess that sort of removed all doubt.

Good listening.

plantgrrl wrote:

Thanks, Commsysman, that's just the kind of info I was hoping for, I really appreciate it.

I'm 100% sure the speakers are toast. We had been living in a house with a built in whole house speaker system. Our speakers were in the garage, and drown in a plumbing leak that broken through the ceiling and poured right down onto them. It was a sad day.