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Wharfedale Baloney

The cones never stop moving unless you power them with DC from a battery. There is no DC from clipped complex AC waveforms more commonly called "music". Clipped music has no DC components.

RGA wrote:
"Yet they blow tweeters...to say the only way to blow one is to overpower them is nonsense since most people who blow them are clear examples of underpowering them."

RG responds:
Voice coils ONLY get damaged from too much power input (electricity).
If you disagree with that statement, please stop reading, as
science is NOT your subject. The only question is how much of that electricity can be attributed to clipping harmonics. Of course,
the answer depends on the program content and the tweeter's high pass filter ... but I presented a Rane Corp white paper with a worst case analysis based on a 100 Hz. square wave with continuous severe clipping (assuming an INCREDIBLY LOUD 100 watts power input) that might amount to one watt or less clipping harmonics getting through to a typical home speaker tweeter with a 2000Hz. 12dB/octave
high pass filter.

The average power getting to the tweeter from clipping harmonics would be considerably LOWER with the intermittent clipping typical with real music.

Please realize that 100 watts and 100Hz. square waves do not represent real music which typically has intermittent clipping due to kick drum hits, snare drum hits, etc. ... where no drummer could hit his kick drum 100 times per second, for example, to immitate continuous clipping of a 100Hz. sine wave test tone!


Here's a quote from Tom Nousaine who tests speakers for a living:

"The speaker never comes to a stop. This idea is a fundamental misunderstanding that comes from that "DC" argument.
I think it stems from the misunderstanding that the analog picture of a sine wave or square wave as it appears on the face of an oscilliscope is actually the 'signal' and the flat top is some kind of DC component.

That picture is just an analog idea or representation of the sound or signal. As Mark began by saying (in his white paper on clipping) there is no DC component ... he's right .... and therefore the cone never stops.

Another part of the analysis that tends to get forgotten is that the tweeters impedance will be rising as well and the only important harmonics will occur around the resonance area of the speaker.

All this is not a criticsm of the work. The idea is well taken and right on the money. You won't protect your speakers by using a larger amplifier. It will just burn them out as fast by supplying more power no matter what the condition of the signal. "
TOM NOUSAINE




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