Many a discussion has been carried out on this and other forums (although in DJ land, the trend is most definitely towards active speakers, so the whole what amp goes with what speaker well discussion becomes mute) about what is the best thing to do.
In general you will need to watch a few things, like impedance (the 8 ohm bit) and the RMS (continous) power rating.
Unless you also need a small(ish) PA mixer with your DJ setup, I’d skip the powered mixers and stick with a regular amp.
The remaining question is do I need MORE power than my speakers or LESS.
This is also where most of the differing opinions originate.
Personally, I think you need a little extra headroom. Here’s the thinking behind it:
* Amplifiers start to distort and then clip as they reach the edge of their power window
* Heavy distortion is audible, so really takes away from the sound quality
* Heavy distortion is, under specific circumstances (like prolonged use in that situation), able to cause permanent damage to your speakers
* clipping is downright damaging to your speakers. Blowing out a tweeter with a nice clipped signal is not an exception.
The more expensive amps will have protection mechanisms, but those are all stop-gaps as far as I am concerned. The simpler clipping protection will just shut off the signal to the speaker. In which case the audience will hear the break in the sound and you have to hope it kicks in before serious harm is done.
IF you have like 20-25% power headroom, you don’t have to (nor should) turn your amp up to 100%, thus staying away from distortion/clipping. You can either measure or field test what amp volume level you need to stick to and mark that position. Make it a habit to never turn your amps up higher than that, respect the “0dB Rulez”-rule throughout the rest of the signal path (controller/mixer/whatever) and you should be golden.
In my days I have seen more speakers blown because of UNDERpowered amps than OVERpowered amps because of the reasons I described.
Hope that helps some.
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