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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: From Wharfedale posted by RGA on August 25, 2003 at 22:33:54:
Just so you don't get on me Richard LOL. I also agree with you 100% that damage will result from opverpowering a speaker...which seems to make a lot of sense. In effect this is PUSHING a tweeter, say, too hard and well beyond its limits. However, most people I know who have blown speakers tend to blow tweeters with underpower and blow woofers with overpower...just observation no stats just things I've noticed.Gerard Rejskind, "The World of High Fidelity", p132
"There is scarcely a manufacturer that doesn't publish a suggested amplifier power figure for its speakers. Indeed, it may publish two figures: Minimum power of 35 watts, and a maximum of 200 watts, say. Reading those is largely a waste of time...time that would be better spent going over the warranty with a magnifying glass.
Most speaker warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. That's because they don't apply if you overload the speaker, or if you drive it with an amplifier that is too small. Who determines if the you've done that? The manufacturer does.
And not too many apply the warranty liberally. Obviously, you can't win. Use a large amplifier and you'll be told that you turned it up too loud and blew the speaker. Use a small one, and you'll be told it probably overloaded enough to produce large amounts of harmonic distortion whcih burned the tweeters...that 35 watt minimum figure doesn't mean a thing, since only you know what your room is like and how loud you like to listen. The 200 watt figure doesn't mean much either. If you feed a 200 watt white noise signal to the speaker and wait for a while, you'll see smoke. In a typical system with such a rating, the woofer will accept 200 watts for 20 seconds at a time, with a ten minute cooling period before you do it again. The tweeter will do the same thing with ten watts. And the crossover network will behave fairly well at an input of 100 watts, but will not necessarily meet its specs beyond that. So what does that 200 watts mean? Everything as long as the speaker doesn't burn out, not much if it does.
My Advice: Learn what distortion sounds like, and turn down the volume when you hear it...and at your New Year's paty, arrange to run out of liquor before anyone gets too loaded."
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Follow Ups
- UHF Magazine: - RGA 23:04:02 08/25/03 (2)
- Paragraph is rambling ... but advice in last sentence is correct - Richard BassNut Greene 07:22:58 08/26/03 (1)
- LOL - RGA 11:26:51 08/26/03 (0)
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