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1600w too much

#41
heath_the_great said:
well ive been confused after looking at acme cabinets, with them saying the more clean power you pump in the better they sound, and after seeing people pump 2000w into the b4, i just had/have no idea how my peavey will go or how much i should pump into it, and i still dont know, its all confusing to me
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All this talk about headroom is confusing. The whole idea of headroom is to have spare 'capacity' that isn't normally in use. When a large transient comes along the headroom allows the signal to be reproduced with distortion. At least that's the way I understand it.

The thing is, the whole signal chain needs sufficient headroom to reproduce the signal without distortion, not just the power amp. The speaker cab is part of that signal chain. Your peavey is rated at 700w peak, which is an indication of it's ability to handle transients. It's most likely related to the maximum excursion allowable for the driver before damage or severe distortion. That 1600w Peak (brand) amp is probably capable of delivering something in excess of 3kw on transients before it clips. If you use the headroom available in that amp the sound that comes out of the peavey is not going to be too flash, even if it survives undamaged.

So my point is you need to consider the weakest link when you're looking at headroom. You can have headroom in the amp that you can't exploit if the cab is not up to it. To me that's a pretty good definition of an amp being 'too big'.

I like headroom too. But I think that means having a resonably well matched amp and cab that can produce/handle more power than I normally require and deal with the transients. I run my wt800b bridged @ 1100w and my cab is rated at 1000w, both rms. This is way more than I need but its clean and punchy and as other have said it feels good under the hands.

So I guess I think a 1600w rms amp into a 350w rms cab is too much. But if you like the tone and the price is really good, those are a couple of good reasons to consider it. Especially if you think a cab upgrade might be somewhere in your future.
 
#42
Powering a 350W cabinet with an amp rated at 1600W is not the same as actually putting 1600W into a 350W rated cabinet on a longterm basis..... A lot of people can't seem to make the distinction.

Too much average power and overexcursion are the speaker killers, with overexcursion being responsible for about 90% of woofer failures in my (significant) experience.
 
#44
heath_the_great said:
well as it was pointed out before, i can pump 500w into it, not just 1600w....im not "upgrading" the cabinet, i want 2 different cabinet configs (a 4x10 and a 2x15), theres no way ill get rid of this peavey cab, its so damn good

as i said, the whole thing that confused me is the acme cabinet thing "the more power you pump into it the better it sounds"
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i think the acmes are a bit of a special case because they have such a large speaker excursion. but people have creased the speakers in acmes and blown them from too much power too. they are just power hungry so people use lots of power with them to get them to open up and really thump. but you can still overpower them and damage them.

from what i've read around here is about double the rated power is a safe limit. about 800watts would be safer with your cab maybe?

but try it out with 500 watts from one side of the amp. if thats enough then you will be able to just do that or power it all up when you get your new cabs and you'll be laughing
 
#45
Personally - i've found having all that power on tap is glorious.
But drop this 1600w non-sense for a minute - think about the technical side of it.
It's 1600w bridged at 4 ohm. Not everyone wants this obviously.
In stereo mode, it has 800w a side at 4 ohm, or 500w at 8 ohm a side.

So really, in a practical sense - if you have a 4x10 and 1x15 - you'll be able to run each of them independantly and configure the volume indivisually to suit the room, regardless of impedance.:) Think about it - thats 500w to each 8ohm cab.
Tooo much boooooom - decrease the 15"...etc.. No worries.
Amd i'll never have to worry about not having enuf juice.
Sorry fellas's, but having that kinda flexibility is so good i'll never go back to a standard one channel amplifier.:bassist: :cool:

And, because i've got the extra power, i'm able to run both cab's on the one channel - and run the WHOLE PA on the other side at rehearsal, should we need to. Need i say more?

Oh - and on the 100w being enough? I assume you're talking about a tube amp - cos my 150w SS amp can't be heard next to a drumkit. Please - i don't intend to start another Tube VS SS flame war.
Cadduc - 2 SVT's simultaneously would be sweet!
I'm trying to keep the drool off the keyboard right now;)

smo
 
#46
heath_the_great said:
as i said, the whole thing that confused me is the acme cabinet thing "the more power you pump into it the better it sounds"
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IME this is true of *all* speakers, within their particular capacities, not just Acme. But IMO that's not really the cab sounding better so much as it is the amp sounding better because you have more headroom with a bigger amp if the cab and playing situation are the same. If your goal is clean reproduction (which it may not be if an overdriven SVT is tone nirvana for you), then bigger amps just sound better (up to a point; in a coffeehouse gig I doubt if you'd get much better tone out of a 4000 W amp into an Aguilar GS112, say, than out of a 2000 W amp).
 
#48
Chef said:
Again, 1600 watts avaiable does not have to mean 1600 watts used!!!
I often run an Eden Navigator into a qsc/plx 1602 bridged at 1600 watts into either a Schroeder 1210 (rated 800 watts), or SWR Henry 8x8 (rated 475 watts).
I very seldom turn the Nav input up over 1/2, output over 1/3, and run the qsc at full power.
The result? Huge solid low end, great dynamic response, even at low rehearsal volume.

You don't have to turn everything all the way up!!!
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Sigh... You could repeat that until you're blue in the face, people still don't listen. I was talking to a bass player in another band one night and he told me what he used, and then he asked what I used, and I told him how much power I had, available, and he flipped out, couldn't believe it, said I'd never need that much, and then he went and told the club owner on me:rolleyes: and I got into a fight with him, he told me that that much power would bring the cops in. :scowl:
 
#49
sweet, well its all figured out now...it seems like a really suitable amp for what i want, and looks like this is how it'll work out

Into the Peavey (350w, 700w peak @ 8ohm) - ill run it just on one side which will give me 500w

If i get a Hartke 215xl (400w @ 4ohm) - again run it from one side so it'll get 800w (now that'd be thumpin)

if i get 2 Nemesis 1x15's or 1x15+2x10 (300w each @ 8ohm) - ill run each other on seperate sides, 500w each

great plan:D
 
#55
Richard Lindsey said:
(up to a point; in a coffeehouse gig I doubt if you'd get much better tone out of a 4000 W amp into an Aguilar GS112, say, than out of a 2000 W amp).
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Yep, I remember the day when a 2000 W amp was enough to play a coffeehouse.

Those were the days..... Now it's 10 kW minimum, just to hear yourself over the fiddle.

;)
 
#56
Daytona955i said:
Sigh... You could repeat that until you're blue in the face, people still don't listen. I was talking to a bass player in another band one night and he told me what he used, and then he asked what I used, and I told him how much power I had, available, and he flipped out, couldn't believe it, said I'd never need that much, and then he went and told the club owner on me:rolleyes: and I got into a fight with him, he told me that that much power would bring the cops in. :scowl:
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LMAO, that guy's a dolt... I agree with you, that mentality is so spinal tap... But, this one goes to 11... Just because you CAN crank the knob, doesnt mean you're supposed to.

That mind set indicates, that you should buy the amp, which is barely capable of buying the amp the produces enough volume, & crank it to max output. Silly, isnt it?
 
#57
Richard Lindsey said:
IME this is true of *all* speakers, within their particular capacities, not just Acme. But IMO that's not really the cab sounding better so much as it is the amp sounding better because you have more headroom with a bigger amp if the cab and playing situation are the same. If your goal is clean reproduction (which it may not be if an overdriven SVT is tone nirvana for you), then bigger amps just sound better (up to a point; in a coffeehouse gig I doubt if you'd get much better tone out of a 4000 W amp into an Aguilar GS112, say, than out of a 2000 W amp).
Click to expand...

*grin* I looked for en emoticon, that resembled a nuclear explosion, but I lost mine.... But, it does seem appropriate here, doesnt it?
 

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