Just an update for the archives, the Adcom 535 II that I posted about is
now performing beautifully. All four of the 4 amp 250V fuses on the main
circuit board were blown, while the 5 amp 250V main fuse was not blown.
I replaced them with 4A 250V fast-acting fuses and both channels now
sound great *whew*. Thanks to all who responded and berated me for
buying on eBay and using gain as a testing tool. After the fuses were
replaced I also made sure to try out both channels on an old panasonic
junker.

Jonny Durango

The subway doors open. A hobo enters, holding a bottle of windex in one
hand and a tube of toothpaste in the other. He says: Which is the better
time to read Dostyevsky? Winter?

He sprays the windex.

Hobo: Or Spring?

He squeezes toothpaste out of the tube.

Japanese girl: Spring!

Hobo: You are correct.

Source: http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/

and still I want to inquire

did you fuse the speakers you built? and if you did, how?

It was much discussed and the pro's and con's debated here.

dale

did you fuse the speakers you built? and if you did, how?

There are two ways to "fuse" a speaker. One way is to pump too much current
through them.

By the way, I'm glad the problem turned out to be blown fuses. It's nice when
you can fix stuff yourself for a few bucks.

dale wrote:
and still I want to inquire

did you fuse the speakers you built? and if you did, how?

It was much discussed and the pro's and con's debated here.

dale


No I never ended up doing that. I probably will later down the
road....in the mean time I'll simply have to be very careful and keep
friends away from the volume knob.

No, I never ended up doing that. I probably will later down the
road... In the meantime I'll simply have to be very careful and
keep friends away from the volume knob.

This is The Great Speaker Killer. Listeners who don't recognize distortion (ie,
most listeners) keep cranking up the volume until the speaker is destroyed.

William Sommerwerck wrote:
No, I never ended up doing that. I probably will later down the
road... In the meantime I'll simply have to be very careful and
keep friends away from the volume knob.


This is The Great Speaker Killer. Listeners who don't recognize distortion (ie,
most listeners) keep cranking up the volume until the speaker is destroyed.


Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than clean
sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing) of
the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker
George

George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than clean
sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing) of
the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered amp
and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low powered amp.
So this is not the case?

Joe Sensor wrote:
George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than
clean sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing) of
the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker


Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered amp
and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low powered amp.
So this is not the case?


most of the confusion revolves around distorted low power
to distort a low power amp you put it into clipping
its output in clipping can be MUCH greater than its rated power
also most speaker specs are pie in the sky marketing bull****
just like a 10 amp load will not trip a 20 amp breaker
a 250 watt signal will not overheat a voice coil that can shed 300 watts
of power
which is why I said "properly rated" in regards to the speaker

three quarts will never fill a gallon bucket
250 watts will no exceed the limit of a 300 watt device

On Mon, 09 May 2005 02:05:48 GMT, George Gleason
wrote:

which is why I said "properly rated" in regards to the speaker

Sure 'nuf. That should really mean that the amplifier never
clips; not impossible with modern amplifiers and sensible
operaters.

The "sensible" part might get difficult in some circumstances,
so another issue can crop up: clipping causes distortion
products that *all* are higher in pitch that the note that
cause them. To the extent that they fall into the range of
the inherently more fragile tweeter-ish drivers, damage can
occur from "too small" amplifiers.

All stuff you know all too well; only mentioned for completeness.

Chris Hornbeck
"Clean, edgy, gutless, and lifeless." -Dan Kennedy

Joe Sensor wrote:

George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any
quicker than clean sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat
shedding(wattage rating) of the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a
properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this?

If he isn't, I am. ;-)

George posts frequently and expertly to
alt.audio.pro.live-sound. People who do live sound as a
group probably have more experience with damaging and
damaged speakers than just about any other group of audio
folks, because of the nature of their work.

I always heard that using an under powered
amp and driving it to distortion can kill speakers.

An old wife's tale - one that has been deconstructed by
technical experts and expert hands-on workers many times.

Even a low powered amp. So this is not the case?

Nope.

Here's a technical paper from a reliable source that
debunks that idea:

http://www.rane.com/note128.html

Chris Hornbeck wrote:
On Mon, 09 May 2005 02:05:48 GMT, George Gleason
wrote:

which is why I said "properly rated" in regards to the
speaker

Sure 'nuf. That should really mean that the amplifier
never
clips; not impossible with modern amplifiers and sensible
operaters.

The "sensible" part might get difficult in some
circumstances,
so another issue can crop up: clipping causes distortion
products that *all* are higher in pitch that the note that
cause them.

However, this does not mean that clipping always produces a
signal with more energy at high frequencies than the
origional unclipped signal. Distorting a signal produces
spurious responses at both harmonics and also difference
frequencies. As a rule, the difference frequencies vastly
outnumber the harmonics. Their basic nature is that they are
lower than the frequencies that are present in the original
signal.

No, I never ended up doing that. I probably will later down the
road... In the meantime I'll simply have to be very careful and
keep friends away from the volume knob.

This is The Great Speaker Killer. Listeners who don't recognize distortion
(ie,
most listeners) keep cranking up the volume until the speaker is destroyed.

Distortion does not kill (as in burn out) speakers any quicker than clean
sound what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rating)
of the voice coil 235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly
rated 300 watt speaker

That isn't what I said. At all. Please re-read it.

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than clean
sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing) of
the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered amp
and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low powered amp.
So this is not the case?

The "urban legend" has always been that driving a low-powered amp into clipping
is more likely to burn out a speaker (the tweeter, at least) than playing a
higher-powered amp at without clipping.

The reasoning is that a clipped waveform has considerably more HF energy than a
higher-voltage waveform that isn't clipped. This makes sense, but no one (AFAIK)
has ever actually performed the experiment.

Regardless of whether the waveform is clipped or not, a speaker is damaged when
the average power (not RMS power -- there is no such thing) delivered to its
voice coil heats it to the point where the adhesive comes loose, the former is
deformed, etc.

Arny Krueger wrote:

If he isn't, I am. ;-)

George posts frequently and expertly to
alt.audio.pro.live-sound. People who do live sound as a
group probably have more experience with damaging and
damaged speakers than just about any other group of audio
folks, because of the nature of their work.

Agreed. That's why I was very interested in George's reply.

William Sommerwerck wrote:
Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than
clean sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing)
of the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered
amp and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low
powered amp. So this is not the case?

The "urban legend" has always been that driving a low-powered amp
into clipping is more likely to burn out a speaker (the tweeter, at
least) than playing a higher-powered amp at without clipping.

The reasoning is that a clipped waveform has considerably more HF
energy than a higher-voltage waveform that isn't clipped. This makes
sense, but no one (AFAIK) has ever actually performed the experiment.


An amplifier is rated and measured by its *sine* wave average power
(Irms.Vrms). The peak supply voltage to achieve this rms voltage is
sqrt(2) times larger. The peak current from this voltage is also sqrt(2)
times larger for the same load. So, a square wave at these peak rail
voltages will generate 2 times the average rated power into the load,
continuously. We therefore don't have to introduce any hi tooting
concepts of "hf energy spectrum" to account for why such a signal can
thermally destroy a resistive voice coil. Its *twice* the rated power of
the amplifier, at any frequency. Dah...

What contributes even more so, is that heavily clipped waveforms look
like a square wave for much longer, and so spend more time at that
maximum output power. Non clipped waveforms, only have peak average
powers for a fraction of the time, such that the average average power
is less. Yes, and I mean the average average power!

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

In article ,
Joe Sensor wrote:
George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than clean
sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing) of
the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered amp
and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low powered amp.
So this is not the case?

It _is_ the case, because very few speakers out there meet George's
definition of "properly rated."

In fact, speaker power ratings are mostly made-up numbers that someone
in the marketing department pulled out of their okole.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

William Sommerwerck wrote:

The "urban legend" has always been that driving a low-powered amp into clipping
is more likely to burn out a speaker (the tweeter, at least) than playing a
higher-powered amp at without clipping.

The reasoning is that a clipped waveform has considerably more HF energy than a
higher-voltage waveform that isn't clipped. This makes sense, but no one (AFAIK)
has ever actually performed the experiment.

I believe Dick Pierce has.

Regardless of whether the waveform is clipped or not, a speaker is damaged when
the average power (not RMS power -- there is no such thing) delivered to its
voice coil heats it to the point where the adhesive comes loose, the former is
deformed, etc.

This is the usual failure mode for woofers, but not always the usual one for
compression drivers.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article ,
Joe Sensor wrote:
George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than
clean sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing)
of the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered
amp and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low
powered amp. So this is not the case?

It _is_ the case, because very few speakers out there meet George's
definition of "properly rated."

In fact, speaker power ratings are mostly made-up numbers that someone
in the marketing department pulled out of their okole.
--scott

Well, according to JBL, they do power noise testing. As far as thermal
goes, all you should have to do is measure the steady state temperature
of the coil. The aging/fusing characteristics of wire over temperature
is very well known.

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

Kevin Aylward wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Joe Sensor wrote:
George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than
clean sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing)
of the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered
amp and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low
powered amp. So this is not the case?

It _is_ the case, because very few speakers out there meet George's
definition of "properly rated."

In fact, speaker power ratings are mostly made-up numbers that someone
in the marketing department pulled out of their okole.

Well, according to JBL, they do power noise testing. As far as thermal
goes, all you should have to do is measure the steady state temperature
of the coil. The aging/fusing characteristics of wire over temperature
is very well known.

JBL's numbers are really about the only ones out there that I would come
close to trusting. Most of the vendors out there don't even bother doing
that.

Part of the problem is that there are a bunch of different failure modes.
You can overheat a driver and burn the coil with high continuous levels,
but then again you can also drive the coil beyond maximum excursion and
rip the cone and spider with a short transient too. So one single scalar
power number may not tell the whole story anyway....

And it's made worse by the fake power ratings on amplifiers. Pro audio
manufacturers don't have to hold by the FTC guidelines for power ratings
and you do see some crazy numbers out there that don't reflect the real
amplifier power. It's not as bad as it is in the car audio world, mind
you, but it's bad.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Kevin Aylward wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:
Joe Sensor wrote:
George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than
clean sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage
rateing) of the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated
300 watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered
amp and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low
powered amp. So this is not the case?

It _is_ the case, because very few speakers out there meet George's
definition of "properly rated."

In fact, speaker power ratings are mostly made-up numbers that
someone in the marketing department pulled out of their okole.

Well, according to JBL, they do power noise testing. As far as
thermal goes, all you should have to do is measure the steady state
temperature of the coil. The aging/fusing characteristics of wire
over temperature is very well known.

JBL's numbers are really about the only ones out there that I would
come close to trusting. Most of the vendors out there don't even
bother doing that.

Part of the problem is that there are a bunch of different failure
modes. You can overheat a driver and burn the coil with high
continuous levels, but then again you can also drive the coil beyond
maximum excursion and rip the cone and spider with a short transient
too.

Yes. Thats why I always go for the amp rating = speaker ratings.

So one single scalar power number may not tell the whole story
anyway....

And it's made worse by the fake power ratings on amplifiers. Pro
audio manufacturers don't have to hold by the FTC guidelines for
power ratings and you do see some crazy numbers out there that don't
reflect the real amplifier power. It's not as bad as it is in the
car audio world, mind you, but it's bad.

I would say most pro audio companies pretty much always give correct
average power ratings (rms) in my view.

Kevin Aylward

http://www.anasoft.co.uk
SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode
Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture,
Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

In article writes:

The "urban legend" has always been that driving a low-powered amp into clipping
is more likely to burn out a speaker (the tweeter, at least) than playing a
higher-powered amp at without clipping.

The reasoning is that a clipped waveform has considerably more HF energy than a
higher-voltage waveform that isn't clipped. This makes sense, but no one
(AFAIK)
has ever actually performed the experiment.

Well, we don't like to destructively test our speakers. Also, the
"threshold of destruction" for a speaker isn't particularly well
defined. There really isn't a good experiment to perform.

Regardless of whether the waveform is clipped or not, a speaker is damaged when
the average power (not RMS power -- there is no such thing) delivered to its
voice coil heats it to the point where the adhesive comes loose, the former is
deformed, etc.

The average energy in a square wave is greater than that in a sine
wave of the same fundamental frequency and peak amplitude. Since the
peak output level of an amplifier is usually equal to or very close to
the power supply voltage, when you let it clip, you put more energy
into the load than if you don't. More energy blows more speakers
sooner.




--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )
However, until the spam goes away or Hell freezes over,
lots of IP addresses are blocked from this system. If
you e-mail me and it bounces, use your secret decoder ring
and reach me he double-m-eleven-double-zero at yahoo

Kevin Aylward wrote:

Scott Dorsey wrote:
In article ,
Joe Sensor wrote:
George Gleason wrote:

Distortion does not kill(as in burn out) speakers any quicker than
clean sound
what kills speakers is exceeding the heat shedding(wattage rateing)
of the voice coil
235 watt of pure distortion will NEVER burn out a properly rated 300
watt speaker

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered
amp and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low
powered amp. So this is not the case?

It _is_ the case, because very few speakers out there meet George's
definition of "properly rated."

In fact, speaker power ratings are mostly made-up numbers that someone
in the marketing department pulled out of their okole.
--scott

Well, according to JBL, they do power noise testing. As far as thermal
goes, all you should have to do is measure the steady state temperature
of the coil. The aging/fusing characteristics of wire over temperature
is very well known.

Actually, it's often the adhesive that gives up first.

Graham

Scott Dorsey wrote:

And it's made worse by the fake power ratings on amplifiers. Pro audio
manufacturers don't have to hold by the FTC guidelines for power ratings
and you do see some crazy numbers out there that don't reflect the real
amplifier power. It's not as bad as it is in the car audio world, mind
you, but it's bad.

It is ? Please give an example.

I've rarely seen a pro amp that didn't deliver its rated rms power.

Graham

On Tue, 10 May 2005 05:21:59 +0100, Pooh Bear
wrote:

Actually, it's often the adhesive that gives up first.

Or the VC former hitting the magnet enough to bend itself
fatally. But, yeah, most all abuse failures are thermal, and
clipping/overdriving the amplifier causes most tweeter
failures. My personal experience, with my first pair (always
mono before) of store-bought (always homemade before) of
Smaller Advent's on the very evening that I bought them, excepted,
playing the Yes _Close to the Edge_ album, was clearly Divine
intervention.

Chris Hornbeck

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

However, this does not mean that clipping always produces a
signal with more energy at high frequencies than the
origional unclipped signal. Distorting a signal produces
spurious responses at both harmonics and also difference
frequencies. As a rule, the difference frequencies vastly
outnumber the harmonics. Their basic nature is that they are
lower than the frequencies that are present in the original
signal.

Naw. Distorting a signal produces sum *and* difference frequencies. The sums
are higher. The differences are lower.

Peace,
Paul

Paul Stamler wrote:
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

However, this does not mean that clipping always produces
a
signal with more energy at high frequencies than the
origional unclipped signal. Distorting a signal produces
spurious responses at both harmonics and also difference
frequencies. As a rule, the difference frequencies vastly
outnumber the harmonics. Their basic nature is that they
are
lower than the frequencies that are present in the
original
signal.

Naw. Distorting a signal produces sum *and* difference
frequencies.
The sums are higher. The differences are lower.

The sums are very often out-of-the-audible range, and can be
therefore safely ignored.

I've rarely seen a pro amp that didn't deliver its rated rms power.

There is no such thing (other than a mathematical definition) as RMS power. The
correct term is average (or average continuous) power.

On 9 May 2005 09:53:27 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:

In article ,
Joe Sensor wrote:

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered amp
and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low powered amp.
So this is not the case?

It _is_ the case, because very few speakers out there meet George's
definition of "properly rated."

In fact, speaker power ratings are mostly made-up numbers that someone
in the marketing department pulled out of their okole.

And speaker ratings tend to assume a standard music/speech signal rather
than sine waves. High frequency drivers in a system are often rated at a
much lower power than low frequency drivers - something like 20W in a 100W
system. With normal music most of the power is used at the bass/mid
frequencies so highly rated tweeters aren't needed.

Cheers.

James.

Arny Krueger wrote:
Paul Stamler wrote:
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

However, this does not mean that clipping always produces
a
signal with more energy at high frequencies than the
origional unclipped signal. Distorting a signal produces
spurious responses at both harmonics and also difference
frequencies. As a rule, the difference frequencies vastly
outnumber the harmonics. Their basic nature is that they
are
lower than the frequencies that are present in the
original
signal.

Naw. Distorting a signal produces sum *and* difference
frequencies.
The sums are higher. The differences are lower.

The sums are very often out-of-the-audible range, and can be
therefore safely ignored.

No, not at all! That ultrasonic stuff can't be heard, and it also cannot
be reproduced by the tweeter. Because the tweeter is unable to move quickly
enough, it gets dissipated as heat. Check the impedance curve of a typical
dome tweeter and see what happens above 20 KHz. Pumping ultrasonic stuff
into a tweeter is a very quick way to get smoke.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
Paul Stamler wrote:
Naw. Distorting a signal produces sum *and* difference
frequencies.
The sums are higher. The differences are lower.

The sums are very often out-of-the-audible range, and can be
therefore safely ignored.

Not if the issue is burning out tweeters.

Besides, it ain't so. If both signals are 10kHz then the first-order sum
will be audible, at least to children, and if they're below 7kHz the sum
will be audible even to old farts. And, of course, lower frequencies
intermodulate plenty too; the secret of the fuzzbox.

Peace,
Paul

Paul Stamler wrote:
"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
Paul Stamler wrote:
Naw. Distorting a signal produces sum *and* difference
frequencies.
The sums are higher. The differences are lower.

The sums are very often out-of-the-audible range, and can
be
therefore safely ignored.

Not if the issue is burning out tweeters.

Agreed.

Besides, it ain't so. If both signals are 10kHz then the
first-order
sum will be audible, at least to children, and if they're
below 7kHz
the sum will be audible even to old farts. And, of course,
lower
frequencies intermodulate plenty too; the secret of the
fuzzbox.

Right.

I've done the experiment, and take many kinds of music and
clipped the !!#@!! out of it. It ends up with about the same
overall spectral shaping of a square wave. We all know this
is like a -6 dB/oct roll-off which is the same as the
spectral shaping of red or brown noise. IME this happens
pretty consistently.

I may not have the reason right, but this is what I've
repeatedly observed happening.

Whether the clipped signal is tougher or easier on tweeters
or whatever than the origional music thus depends on the
spectral shaping of the origional music. The unclipped music
is going to be whatever it is, but the clipped output is
going to be spectrally shaped something like red noise.

Music being what it is, its spectral shaping can range from
the same spectral shaping as white noise, pink, noise, red
or brown noise etc.

Therfore, we can't make any global generalizations about
whether clipping is harder or easier on tweeters without
considering the spectral shaping of the origional unclipped
music.

Scott Dorsey wrote:

No, not at all! That ultrasonic stuff can't be heard, and it also cannot
be reproduced by the tweeter. Because the tweeter is unable to move quickly
enough, it gets dissipated as heat.

I was wondering about that.

Thanks, Scott. It is great to have someone around that really knows his
stuff.

Paul Stamler wrote:

The sums are very often out-of-the-audible range, and can be
therefore safely ignored.


Not if the issue is burning out tweeters.

Exactly. The discussion wasn't about what is audible. But rather about
damaging speakers.

Arny Krueger wrote:


I've done the experiment, and take many kinds of music and
clipped the !!#@!! out of it. It ends up with about the same
overall spectral shaping of a square wave. We all know this
is like a -6 dB/oct roll-off which is the same as the
spectral shaping of red or brown noise. IME this happens

Oh stop blathering already. Why don't you just let people that know what
they are talking about explain it?

William Sommerwerck wrote:

I've rarely seen a pro amp that didn't deliver its rated rms power.

There is no such thing (other than a mathematical definition) as RMS power. The
correct term is average (or average continuous) power.

Well, that'll be a surprise for everyone that's been using rms quite happily to
measure AC voltages, currents and powers for the last century or so !

Actually *average* is also a mathematical definition.

The usage of the term average in the FTC spec is highly misleading since average
and rms power have different mathematical definitions.

For example 500W rms = ~ 600W average power ( mathematically ).

I'm afraid you're talking nonsense.


Graham

James Perrett wrote:

On 9 May 2005 09:53:27 -0400, Scott Dorsey wrote:

In article ,
Joe Sensor wrote:

Are you sure about this? I always heard that using an under powered amp
and driving it to distortion can kill speakers. Even a low powered amp.
So this is not the case?

It _is_ the case, because very few speakers out there meet George's
definition of "properly rated."

In fact, speaker power ratings are mostly made-up numbers that someone
in the marketing department pulled out of their okole.

And speaker ratings tend to assume a standard music/speech signal rather
than sine waves. High frequency drivers in a system are often rated at a
much lower power than low frequency drivers - something like 20W in a 100W
system. With normal music most of the power is used at the bass/mid
frequencies so highly rated tweeters aren't needed.

Except there is no such thing as a standard music signal !

Graham

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Pumping ultrasonic stuff into a tweeter is a very quick way to get smoke.

Same for DC and woofers. ;-)

Graham

Arny Krueger wrote:

Therfore, we can't make any global generalizations about
whether clipping is harder or easier on tweeters without
considering the spectral shaping of the origional unclipped
music.

Or - perhaps more appropriately - any assumption made by the designers
of the speaker as to the spectral content they expected the speaker to
be able to endure !

i.e. consider the power rating of the tweeter.


Graham

Pooh Bear wrote:

Except there is no such thing as a standard music signal !

Yes, there is! It's the Osipov State Balalaika Orchestra recording on
Mercury! I always use it for musical testing, so it's a standard. That's
the great thing about audio standards... everybody has their own....
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Pooh Bear wrote:
Scott Dorsey wrote:

Pumping ultrasonic stuff into a tweeter is a very quick way to get smoke.

Same for DC and woofers. ;-)

Yes, and for the same reason! DC resistance of a typical woofer is a good
bit lower than its nominal impedance... lots of DC can flow through there.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."