AudioBanter.com - View Single Post - Help me understand what is too much volume.

(Mr 645) wrote:

...large snips.....

I have also seen various speakers
destroyed by low powered amps pushed beyond their limits.

Do you have some example to share? I've been an audio enthusiast for 35 years
and have not seen a single example of this. I've blown up countless woofers,
midranges and tweeters and in every case it required an amplifier with enough
power to destroy the device and amplifiers with a surplus of power do the job
more quickly and more capably.

There are many friends who have damaged speakers but I've not seen any damage
actually caused by using 'too small' an amplifier.

The most common form of damage is an open or rubbing tweeter voice coil which
can happen with nearly any amplification on the market because most tweeters
can only handle 10-15 watts.

My brother was
always taking out the tweeters on my Boston speakers with an old 20 watt
receiver. Upgrading to a much more powerful model stopped the speaker
damage.

Here's a wonderful anecdote from a audio store speaker technician. He was
giving a talk to the PSACS Audio Club about speaker damage and repair. He
reconed a woofer for us and he had damaged speakers and parts on hand to
demonstrate how things get busted.

Someone asked if 'underpowering' a speakers could cause damage. He ackowledged
that this was true and dragged out a burned looking voice coill from a small
woofer as an example.

Because it didn't look much different from other damaged coils he showed I
asked how he knew this particular damage was caused by underpowering?

His reply was "I know the guy who owns this speaker and I watched him 'abuse'
this speaker for YEARS with that LITTLE AMP." When asked how many times the
speaker had been repaired he said "once."

So the Legend overrode the evidence in this case. The owner eventually burned
out this speaker by playing it flat out for "years" but the blame was put on
"underpowering." I submit that a larger amplifier would have damaged that
woofer more quickly.

The Urban Legend aside we should all take the obvious message here. The tweeter
is the most fragile part of any loudspeaker system with a power handlling
capability much lower tnan the power rating of the speaker total system.

Thus they are more easily damaged and can be damaged by even fairly small
amplifiers.