That wasn't
@GuitarDojo , it was
@Gamedojo . Note that he was running a $3000 pair of Boston Acoustics T-930 speakers, which were meant for power amplifiers up to 150 watts and could handle transients beyond that.
https://forum.fractalaudio.com/thre...up-my-axe-fx-for-home-use.96631/#post-1159193
We perceive the volume of raw guitar tones differently from how we perceive the volume of program material. "Loud enough " when you're playing guitar can be "too loud" when you're playing a CD.
Also, CDs and MP3s are compressed and limited, so transients never exceed a certain amount. But raw guitar tones can contain some brutal transients. That's what makes the guitar sound punchy in a way that it just doesn't when it's part of a recording.
I think with some extreme carelessness you could no doubt do some harm, but I think it’s the exception, not the rule.
I used to run a bunch of old analog synths and drum machines etc through home speakers. You can get some massive level spikes, crazy amounts of low freq content etc cranked the resonance and cutoff controls on Moog synth and such and I still never damaged anything, even probably not being in a “responsible” mindset back in the day.
It’s really no different than plugging a set of headphones into the Axe. You can possibly produce a damaging level, the poor ears would be my first worry, but you could also damage the drivers in the headphones, BUT, lots of folks are using modelers at home on a daily basis with headphones and they seem to hold up.
Again, if you think your home stereo is gong to compete with a drummer or soemthing, then probably not, but if your playing at typical home listening levels, it will be fine. Provided you don’t do anything weird like crank the output knob from 9 o’clock to max, or turn the levels of various blocks crazy high etc.
I dial in my patches for the peak levels, and short of doing soemthing really weird, I don’t think there is any way I could physically hit my strings harder, turn on more blocks etc to produce damaging levels. Well leveled patches just shouldn’t do that, and you don’t want to send that to a mixing board, PA etc any more than you would a home stereo system.
Given how many great biamp’d monitors speaker there are, for just a few hundred dollars, I don’t think there is much case for using a home stereo, but it will certainly be fine with a little common sense.