"Barton Bosch" wrote in message


I don't know if your reply was intended as a troll or if you just
missed the "assuming a reasonable playback volume for a given
speaker/amp combination" statement in my message.

By definition, a "...reasonable playback volume for a given speaker/amp
combination..." will never damage it.

Your advice to "keep the volume turned down for 'any signal' and your
speakers will be fine holds for the general case," but in the case of
a clipped signal the volume/output spikes, and what was an acceptable
volume for the non-clipped portion of the signal quickly becomes
hazardous to the speakers...

Clipping a signal heavily is obviously not a really *nice* thing to do to
it, but just clipping a signal doesn't make it an instant destroyer of
speakers.

A signal is not just a signal when it is clipped.

But in reality, it is. There's a lot of lore about clipped signals, like the
idea that clipped signals always have more high frequency content, that just
isn't true.

The key consideration in any speaker damage situation is the nut holding the
knob on the volume control. Saying "the clipped signal made me do it" is IME
a cop-out.