which speakers for my amplifier?

Doesn't make much difference, I'd go with the ones that sounded best to me. The RMS rating refers to maximum power at a given distortion level. Either set of speakers are nominally capable of handling the rated RMS output of your amp, provided you remain within that rated output and don't consistently drive your amp into distortion. The RMS rating of a speaker has nothing to do with how loud it will play; what determines that is the speaker's efficiency rating, which commonly is expressed in dB-per-1Watt @ 1 Meter, as in "89 dB @1 Watt/1 Meter". The higher the dB @ 1 Watt figure is, the louder the speakers will play (higher efficiency).

A speaker is more apt to be damaged by an amp driven into clipping distortion in a quest for more volume than by being "over-powered". Speakers are designed to reproduce a smooth, rolling "sine wave". Distortion caused by overdriving an amplifier results in a truncated, "square wave", or "Clipped", output, which can and will shred a speaker's cone and/or melt its voice coil. A speaker fed a clean sinewave signal well beyond the rated RMS capability of that speaker likely will suffer no damage, while a speaker fed a distorted squarewave signal well within that speaker's RMS rating will be destroyed in short order.

Typically, the power directed by the amp's program material steering to surround speakers is considerably less than that steered to the main (front left, center, and front right) speakers. The only way to get more volume is to increase either or both speaker efficiency and/or amplifier power. A dedicated powered subwoofer, used in a system with effective Low Frequency Effect (LFE) steering(which may be provided either by the amp or by the subwoofer -consult the documentation for each, and follow the appropriate hookup instructions) will allow more of the amplifier's available rated power to be devoted to the mid and upper end of the sonic spectrum via the main and surround speakers, while the subwoofer and its own amplifier takes over the job of reproducing the power-intensive base range of the spectrum. Freeing the amp from the job of reproducing the low end will yield an apparent increase in undistorted volume, as the energy, or power, required to reproduce the mid and upper range of program material at a given volume level decreases as the frequency of that material increases. If an amp is forced into clipping distortion to "Get Enough Base", the mid and upper frequencies are going to be distorted, or "Clipped", as well.

we have a bunch of Bose system 20s in rooms of the house and we like them because
1 we can drive them to the ear splitting volume that the kids like
2 we can play music quietly and have a very nice bass response even at low volumes

I always thought that you could drive a speaker to peak performance really loud , but the true picture of quality sound is a good brilliant response at low volumes.

Most of those car systems with mega bass drivers that the kids put in their crotch rockets are an example, at low volumes , they barely provide a decent bass response. so they almost have to drive around with the volume up.

I dot spend alot of time or money in major speaker investment like I did when I was younger, the Bose systems are, to me, a very nice provider of sound at an affordable price. i have a lot of old records, mostly jazz and all of Ray Charles. Id like to have thhese converted to CDs . I have no idea of the quality of DVD and CD recorders orther than the capabilities of the combo drive on my computer.

The key there is what sounds best to you, not how much you paid or who makes what, or which reviewer says what about it, IMO. You are the ultimate arbiter of what you like, and if it works for you, and you're happy, its what's right for you. The reviewers don't spend anywhere near as much time in your listening room as do you, after all :wink:

As for converting Vinyl or Tape to CD or DVD, that's a whole 'nother subject. I do a bit of that myself. Why not open a topic for it, and we'll see if we can get a discussion goin'. I use both 'Puter-based and stand-alone audiophile equipment to accomplish the task, depending on what I'm tryin' to accomplish.

On my system I have a JBL 6-1 (L/R Front, L/R Rear, Center front, Center rear and Subwoofer) speaker surround system and 2 Kenwood 3-way Main Speakers.

If your Amp has completely seperate Main and Surround channels I'd suggest you go a similar route. Speakers are designed for specific purposes and as a result surround sound speakers aren't really designed to work well as stereo music speakers and vice-versa.

fishin', remember This. from This Long-Dormant Thread ?

Yup. I was thinking about that thread when I read this one. It's ben a while since we had a good audio equipment discussion on here.

Bitching BIG ones!!

I inherited a set of JBL aQUARIUS speakers from my dad and , in 1990, when these speakers were about 28 years old, I busted the suspensors on the bass driver. These speakers had reeeaaly heavy ALNICO magnets on the bass and the busted suspensors made bass sound shitty. I sent them out to a place that repaired sound equip. They sent them back to JBL (somewhere in calif i think0 They fixed em for free because they said that they had some bad glue in that serial number batch. i think mine were the oldest to be repaired. They sent me a letter that just asked me to trell my friends. I dont even know whether JBL is in business but I loved them speakers and like fishin, the importance of all that gear in a room began to wear off . the only thing i miss is the truer sound of analog systems. im sure with all the digital noise filtering , perhaps records could make an edgy comeback.

Timber, Ill start a thread on the topic of transferring records