|
|
|
|
Help me understand what is too much volume.
Terry Zagar wrote:
Nousaine wrote:
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.
Doesn't that depend on the tweeter model being used and the specifics
of the loudspeaker 'system'?
Of course; and your anecdote that follows demonstrates this.
My old IM Fried Model M2's had Dynaudio tweeters (6.5 Ohms nominal
impedance) with specs that claimed they could handle up to 500 Watt
pulses.
The system or the tweeters? 
As I recall, the 'system' spec called for an amp in the range
of 25-100 Watts. The only time I got a chance to see if that might be
true was when I once turned on my system with the preamp volume
control set to its max position (rather than the min position I
normally set on shut-down). With a source playing through my 180
Watts RMS per channel amp, which has around 360 Watts peak power per
channel into 8 Ohms and 600 Watts peak into 4 Ohms, the sound emitted
by the Fried's was not pretty (the preamp outputs up to 25 Volts and
the amp needs only 1.65 Volts for full output - obviously a case of
severe amp overload  ).
You're now describing a typical type of tweeter/system damage scenario.
Once I ran across the room and turned
down the volume, I found that one loudspeaker had blown its in-line
protective fuse, the other had not. Both tweeters, however, survived,
apparently unscathed. In this case, the one fuse was the 'most
fragile' part of the system, not the tweeters.
Ain't that the moral to this story. It's interesting that for some time 'fuses'
were considered sound quality degraders by the high-end.
If one of the fuses survived this incident I would be considering going to a
smaller value.
Some newer models use 'solid state' protection devices for the tweeter. These
devices seem to work pretty sell. I test several dozen speaker systems every
year and haven't seen a tweeter fuse in the past couple years.
|