Yes, they have a decent keyboard dept. It's a shame they are not up on current (or even age-old) science in bass cabs. You have to read between the lines and kiss a lot of frogs, but TalkBass should almost be required reading for the bass gear salesmen
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Okay.......*** Sweetwater said......
- Thread starter GrinningMouth88
- Start date
Yes, they have a decent keyboard dept. It's a shame they are not up on current (or even age-old) science in bass cabs. You have to read between the lines and kiss a lot of frogs, but TalkBass should almost be required reading for the bass gear salesmen
billfitzmaurice
Commercial User
- Sep 15, 2004
- 16,860
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- Owner, Bill Fitzmaurice Loudspeaker Design
It's not bad, but the conclusions drawn are heavily influenced by why it was written, to help sell compressors. And it's very much aimed at the PA market, where you never want clipping, as opposed to the musical instrument market, where you do.
Jazzdogg
Less barking, more wagging!
You are correct about the effect of distortion on woofers.
However, sending a signal that is more powerful than a tweeter can handle is likely to damage said tweeter, irrespective of the waveform.
Okay, so maybe i'll trade my 700rbII for a 1001rb and get a bergantino 610. Both have about the same handling. Good Idea?
It will work as long as the wattage between the amp and the cabinet is matched up to within 15% or so. That way you don't have to worry about underpowering the cabinet and blowing it up.
Danimal00
Dealer: Sweetwater
- Feb 28, 2006
- 156
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- Sweetwater Sound Senior Sales Engineer
Can you PM me the name of your guy here so I can talk with him please. Sorry for the late join on this thread.
Dan
Take a 100 watt amp...drive it into distortion....into a 500 watt cab......wait as the voice coils heat up and dislodge from the speaker.
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When a speaker receives power from your amplifier it converts most of the power into sound by moving back and forth and causing the air to vibrate. However, it is not 100% efficient and some of the energy is converted into heat. The higher the power, the higher the heat. When a speaker is given a signal that is clipped, it actually receives far more continuous power than it would when it is given a clean (not distorted) signal. This is converted into more heat than the speaker was designed to handle and the coil literally burns. It can, in extreme situations, actually catch on fire (remember, the cone is made of paper)!
So, you can use a power amplifier that puts out considerably less power than the speaker is rated for, and yet, because it is being run into clipping, the speaker will blow. The harder the amplifier is clipped (the louder the distortion), the greater the chance of this happening.
Under powering is not a myth. The blow outs usually occur in the PA market though. Clipping creates square waves. If you try to push a square wave through a round cone, that's not good. Those sine waves will be truncated once they hit the clip ceiling.
Physics exists. Therefore you cannot claim that it's the industry starting a myth to sell higher end products. It's a fact that an amp with more wattage will provide you with 3db of headroom every time the wattage doubles. In the PA world this is important for fidelity. In the bass world, not so much if you like the sound of your amp breaking up.
When a customer brings me back a blown powered PA speaker I quiz them. I ask them how they were running it. Usually the output was way down and the input was way up. That's how you get your square wave. It does exsist in the PA world.
I'm not familiar enough with the bass amplification world to understand about the construction of the speakers and amps and how they compare to the PA market. I do understand Ohms law though. I can't imagine that there's much of a difference, other than the fact that PA is a full range set up and there's nothing really fascinating about a bass above 5 or 6K.
Physics exists. Therefore you cannot claim that it's the industry starting a myth to sell higher end products. It's a fact that an amp with more wattage will provide you with 3db of headroom every time the wattage doubles. In the PA world this is important for fidelity. In the bass world, not so much if you like the sound of your amp breaking up.
When a customer brings me back a blown powered PA speaker I quiz them. I ask them how they were running it. Usually the output was way down and the input was way up. That's how you get your square wave. It does exsist in the PA world.
I'm not familiar enough with the bass amplification world to understand about the construction of the speakers and amps and how they compare to the PA market. I do understand Ohms law though. I can't imagine that there's much of a difference, other than the fact that PA is a full range set up and there's nothing really fascinating about a bass above 5 or 6K.
Square wave pushes any speaker beyond its thermal limits if it is left powering it long enough. A speaker is an analog device. It moves forward and back "to resting". Put a square wave into a speaker long enough and it will fry. Physics.
DC Burn (Direct Current Burn) is where the user is misusing either the amplifier stage or the mixing desk output stage. In most cases, this fault is caused by the amplifier clipping the input signal due to the user trying to get more out of the amplifier than it will give. This causes an increase in input level, therefore a larger sine wave. If this sine wave is pushed too hard, the amplifier will clip (A red light is normally an indicator of this) the top and bottom of the wave and produce a square wave output which your speakers dont like. At the peak of a sine wave, the voice coil of the speaker is pushed out and therefore, if a square wave is produced (by clipping the amplifier) the voice coil is spending more time out of the gap than it would like. This leads to a poor heat distribution through the magnet which overheats the voice coil and burns it. In the case of DC Burn, you could, as long as your speakers will handle the power, move to a larger output amplifier in which you have more headroom, and less chance of clipping the signal. As a loose rule of thumb, in the case of professional speakers, your amplifier should give an RMS output rated higher than the RMS rating of your speakers.
Why do my speakers blow? | Soundslive
Countless articles on this.
One other thing to keep in mind.
I've seen under powering be a problem far less with bass rigs than PA rigs. I have an idea as to why.
People that buy bass rigs almost always run a bass through them. This gives the manufacturers the ability to build the performance of the product around one instrument.
With a PA it is less predictable what you will be running through it. Also, with the unlimited amount of instruments that can be run through a PA, it is hard to cater the design to "everything".
A reason why PA speakers blow more is because they have more of their woofers and tweeters transient energy being spent than a bass rig does. I don't care how slap happy a bassist is, they will never recreate the transient energy of a snare drum. A snare drum that is inconsistently hit will destroy a tweeter in no time if it isn't controlled/compressed in an under powered system. I'm sure many if you are in bands with this inconsistent drummer.
I've seen under powering be a problem far less with bass rigs than PA rigs. I have an idea as to why.
People that buy bass rigs almost always run a bass through them. This gives the manufacturers the ability to build the performance of the product around one instrument.
With a PA it is less predictable what you will be running through it. Also, with the unlimited amount of instruments that can be run through a PA, it is hard to cater the design to "everything".
A reason why PA speakers blow more is because they have more of their woofers and tweeters transient energy being spent than a bass rig does. I don't care how slap happy a bassist is, they will never recreate the transient energy of a snare drum. A snare drum that is inconsistently hit will destroy a tweeter in no time if it isn't controlled/compressed in an under powered system. I'm sure many if you are in bands with this inconsistent drummer.
See my post a few up. This usually happens when you have insufficient amplifier power into a cabinet with greater handling power. As with everything, there are always exceptions.
"As a loose rule of thumb, in the case of professional speakers, your amplifier should give an RMS output rated higher than the RMS rating of your speakers."
My old analog synth can produce square waves.
Some of my vintage "fuzz box" pedals produce a signal very close to a square wave.
I've never, in 40 years of playing, blown a speaker.
Edit: I've also maxed out a 5 watt amp into a cab rated at 400 watts without damaging the speakers.
Sigh....there are always exceptions. I have blown speakers with over driving a low powered amp. So, I guess we are even.
So, in this case, by your logic, you would more likely blow a cab rated at 1000 watts thermal with a 100 watt amp than a cab rated at 200 watts thermal with a 100 watt amp
.The thermal rating of a cab has NOTHING to do with how much power it needs, only how much maximum power it can take prior to POSSIBLY harming the voice coil.
And, there are really no inherent differences between the way a modern bass cab handles power versus a PA cab. Just like in bass cabs, the vast majority of PA cab failures that I am aware of involve tweeters/horns, which if not protected can be impacted by a spikey distorted signal often associated with running an amp too hard.
So, in this case, by your logic, you would more likely blow a cab rated at 1000 watts thermal with a 100 watt amp than a cab rated at 200 watts thermal with a 100 watt amp
The thermal rating of a cab has NOTHING to do with how much power it needs, only how much maximum power it can take prior to POSSIBLY harming the voice coil.
And, there are really no inherent differences between the way a modern bass cab handles power versus a PA cab.
From the information I posted by different authors, under powering a speaker cabinet with a distorting amp is bad, hmmmk?
