i have two 350 watt speakers, but only have a 480 watt receiver. Will the speakers work if i connect them anyways??
Of course. Quit paying attention to meaningless specifications.
Yes. But watch out for the volume you set for the receiver, assuming that your receiver is 480 watts per channel. Setting it too high (beyond what the speakers can handle - 380 watts) can damage your speakers.
First, you don't have a receiver that can produce 480 watts/ch. There is no such animal. Even the biggest best most expensive receivers will be lucky to get much over 100 watts/ch all channels driven. I'm talking about receivers costing $2000 ~ $3000. The little cheap ones that claim 100 ~ 150 watts/ch can only do about 30 ~ 40 watts/ch all channels driven. If you have one that claims 480 w/ch then it's probably more like 20 watts/ch. The power rating of the speaker has nothing to do with well much of anything other than being a random number. A proper power rating on a speaker would be a set of complex equations so the manufacturers attempt to rate it with a simple number like 350 watts is just a rough guess under some specific undefined conditions. This rating has nothing to do with what size amplifier you will need to use. The speaker impedance is important, it must not be lower than the amplifier can handle. Most mass market receivers struggle with 4 ohms and simply can't do less than 4 ohms. Make sure the speakers are 4 ohms are greater and don't pay much attention to their power rating. Almost any amplifier can damage a speaker regardless of the relative power ratings. Most speakers are damaged by amplifier clipping which comes from trying to drive the amplifier to higher power than it can provide. Some here will tell you that you will be safe if your amplifier power rating is no more than 80% of the speaker rating but that's about as wrong as wrong can get. You can easily blow a 100 or 200 or even 300 watt speaker with an 80 watt amplifier. The safest condition is to have an amplifier with unlimited power so that it never clips and then just don't turn it up beyond safe limits for the speaker. mk
