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amp clipping

#5
mullet0909 said:
does that mean its ok?
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Clipping sounds very very bad. It may help your speakers find an early grave....or not. Do you NEED to perform that experiment? :D

There is good distortion, and bad. A clipping Bass power amp is not good. To paraphrase Duke Ellington: "If it sounds bad, it IS bad." :ninja:

All IMHO, mind you. :smug:
 
#7
This is really a question for the Hartke gurus, but if it sounds good, it is good, IMHO. If you don't hear it breaking up or "farting out," the clip is probably just a peak, nearly instantaneous. Such peaks are OK, IMHO.

Have you got the manual for your head (which was an ambiguous question in the '60s)? It might hold the answer. :D
 
#8
mullet0909 said:
well i dont hear a clip or difference. the amp has a light on it labelled clip. and it lights up when there is a hard enough atack at high volumes.
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If the light is near the amp's input, then it's likely a PREAMP clip which has a lot to do with sound but little to do with the output stage of the amplifier.

If the light is actually an indicator of POWER AMP clipping, you're going to have to clip that amp constantly and incredibly hard for a long time to even AVERAGE 400 watts of output.

Anybody talking about square waves has a small part of the picture.

To answer your question briefly, as long as you care about HOW you sound not just HOW LOUD you sound, there's no way you'd drive your amplifier hard enough to cause thermal failure of your speakers.

If you find you're clipping a lot because you can't be heard, turn down the low boost, give yourself some mids and a bit of treble. It'll help you cut through the mix in frequency ranges that are easier to hear and require less power to reproduce. This way you can also help prevent your speakers from suffering the other type of failure: mechanical interference.
 
#11
this is what the owners manual said:

7. Status LEDs - The bottom “Power” LED lights whenever the HA3000 is powered on
(see #8 below). The top “Clip” LED lights whenever the output signal rises to an
unacceptably high distortion level. The center “Protection” LED goes on for approximately
five seconds when the HA3000 is powered on and fades slowly when it is powered off.
While it is lit, all connected speakers are muted via mechanical relay, thus preventing any
“thump” from occurring.
 
#13
A few basic facts:

1) If you clip enough to really raise the power output a significant amount, it isn't (probably) going to sound good to you.... and so you'll turn down again.

2) If your band is loud and has a loud guitar player, maybe you won't hear it (or yourself, or enough in the monitors to sing harmony, but I digress....) and so maybe you CAN clip "hard" without noticing.

3) It is still pretty doubtful that you would damage a speaker rated for basic power at twice your amp rating. If the speaker rating you mentioned is for "Sooper-Dooper extra peaky once per week" power, and the "rms" rating is lots lower, well, then maybe they'll be doing the dead cat bounce pretty soon.

4) People use amps of several times the power rating of their speakers every day. Most folks cannot play bass "musically" at more than about half power average output for long enough to matter to a speaker. Guitar is another matter entirely.................

5) "clip" lights vary a lot..... Some scream "murder" well before clipping, some you hear distortion before they come on, and as mentioned, some are on the preamp.

Bottom line..... from how I understand what you said, 90% chance you are fine and won't have the slightest problem.
 
#17
billfitzmaurice said:
No woofer has ever been damaged by clipping. Clipping only damages midranges and tweeters.
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Bill-

Yes, I know. It is just that the situation was so unclear. But thanks for the clear and definately authoritative statement. I always learn when YOU post. Really! :hyper:
 

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