My Planned Setup

[wmartinlsmith]

Overpowering a speaker can definitely kill it, both through mechanical failure, and overheating / melting. That's no myth. However, tuning the amp right (\

ahhh fucking untrue young padawan, high power doesnt kill speakers distortion does. ask me how i know, ill show you.....

oh yeah and boston acoustics are all hype, come from the same factory in china as my audiopipe.

[steve s]

JL10w3

[USMC850T]

ahhh fucking untrue young padawan, high power doesnt kill speakers distortion does. ask me how i know, ill show you.....

oh yeah and boston acoustics are all hype, come from the same factory in china as my audiopipe.

I've yet to hear about any chinese manufacturing going on. They're made in an Italian factory if I remember correctly, and have a .67% falure rate.

[b3atboxjr]

ahhh poking untrue young padawan, high power doesnt kill speakers distortion does. ask me how i know, ill show you.....

so giving a 5W speaker an unclipped 1000W won't blow it?

wow... guess it's time to crank up the power!

...sigh

[USMC850T]

I threw 400wpc at a set of speaks tha were rated at 150 . It's been my experience that provided you don't melt a voice coil or exceed the mechanical limits of the speaker, you can throw way more clean power at them than they're rated for.

[paulr]

Overpowering a speaker can definitely kill it, both through mechanical failure, and overheating / melting.

ahhh poking untrue young padawan, high power doesnt kill speakers distortion does. ask me how i know, ill show you.....

It's been my experience that provided you don't melt a voice coil or exceed the mechanical limits of the speaker, you can throw way more clean power at them than they're rated for.

Exactly what I was saying. You can very much kill a speaker by over-powering it, it's a resistive element and a motor mechanism, both of which have limits. You can take a speaker, run a crisp-clean sine wave to it at resonance, and with enough power, it will fall apart or melt, perhaps very easily if it's of poor quality. Improper installs (Which is most door installs) exacerbate this problem, by limiting mechanical resistance.

I know / agree with you that distortion / noise / clipping causes speaker death much more than over-powering does, as does operating them out of their ideal freq range. This is exactly why I'm running my components on a 600W amp and my current 10" on a 1200W amp (although that is just temporary). This is also why I've re-wired with STP (shielded twisted pair) wire, and other noise-removing things.

If you read my previous posts in this thread I think it's pretty obvious i'm not saying "doodz if u huk your 75wRMS speakers into a 300W amp theyre gonna blo". But if you put your 75w speakers on that 300w amp, and crank the hell out of your volume, you could easily end up damaging them or melting them in the right conditions, even if the amp isn't clipping. There's also long-term damage to the drivers, which won't happen right away, but will happen sooner as you weaken the surround and other suspension components.

so giving a 5W speaker an unclipped 1000W won't blow it?

Yes and no, this is a bit part of the "overpowering" confusion. "Overpowering" in the sense of hooking a speaker into a larger "capacity" amp doesn't force it to use that power. Same way moving an appliance from a plug on a 10A breaker to a 20A breaker doesn't blow it. A larger amp, however, is capable of putting out more power, so, makes it easier to blow. If you can gain your amp high enough that the resistance that 5W speaker provides will allow it to pull 1000W, there will be fire. But in order to do that, you'd have to increase the voltage a lot.

Voltage across a speaker (of essentially fixed resistance, we'll ignore their inductive properties, and everything else AC related) is V= IR. Say it's a 4 ohm speaker, and it sees 40 volts. 40/4= 10A. The "power" of 10A at 40V would be 400 watts (P = IV). So, if it's a "400W" 4 ohm speaker, it's capable of handling that much power. This will happen regardless of the amp you connect it to. It won't magically pull more power just because the amp is capable of providing it. However, if you increase the volume another 30%, (52 volts), the speaker is now seeing 13 amps, at 676 watts. Maybe 13 amps will be powerful enough to melt the voice coil, maybe it won't. Maybe 676 watts will be enough force to hyper-extend the suspension, or max out the speaker mechanically - maybe it won't. This is the type of "overpowering" speakers that kills them. Audiophiles can generally hear this happening, but new users frequently don't notice or ignore it.

Clipping is somewhat similar, except the user can almost always hear it. You can read about it at the previous link, but essentially, it happens when you gain / drive an amp to the point where it can't produce the desired voltage. Clipping provides more current than a true sine wave with the same peak voltage, but less current than if the amplifier was unclipped and functioning properly at the same gain level. Clipping, however, is harder on speakers because it represents a moment of "no movement", but a proper waveform at high power can still provide mechanical damage, both instantaneous and long-term.

So at the end of the day, larger capacity amps than your speakers "want" are almost always a good idea, especially in a SQL setting, and they won't cause problems directly. They can help you avoid clipping if you run close to the "max" of your speakers. But going overboard is just that, and won't benefit you in any way. Hooking a 400W amp up to 75W speakers won't be any better than hooking a 200W amp up to the same speakers. Using a 100W amp won't cause problems until you push it into clipping, but you'll be under-utilizing your speakers. Grossly excessive power capacity does make it easier to kill your speakers when you really "Crank it" (and means a more expensive amp), and long running at high volumes will hasten suspension failures, and voice coil collisions, and other nastiness.

So Bill I definitely agree with ya on noise and distortion, and maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I also don't see my statements as being wrong

(sorry if I rambled, it's late here)