I just bought a simple 100 watt speaker system for laptop.
Not sure how much I can boost to bass and volume before it's dangerous to speakers and sub.
Not a speaker guy so any help would be appreciated.

As soon as you start to hear any sort of distortion back the volume off a bit. You will know because it will start to sound like shit.

i've always heard if you go past 75% of what the speakers are capable of it starts to damage them slightly and the music quality goes down a bit

It probably won't damage them unless you've got a really ridiculous power source (which a laptop isn't), but the music quality does go down when you put the volume up really high on a lot of systems. It starts to not make the loudest parts of the music as loud as they should be (because it can't) so they end up being quieter compared to the rest of the sound.

Also, Solokan, I wouldn't worry about damaging the speakers too much. Your laptop probably won't be outputting the 100 watts... I'm guessing the speakers have to be plugged into an outlet too. That's because they contain an amplifier, and that's where they get most of the power from, so they should be able to regulate it. Still, probably not the best idea to keep them blasted at 100% all the time, just be reasonable.

This post was edited by jfkelley on May 25 2012 03:45am