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overpower or underpower, a hypothetical..

#41
Herman said:
The signal is compressed but not to a constant level. The average power of the clipped/compressed signal is increased - it's this higher average power that is potentially damaging to the speakers.



No, it doesn't become a DC voltage and speakers aren't damaged by clipping in and of itself - it's the increased average power of the clipped waveform that causes the damage.



What does "underdrive a speaker" mean? If your amp is cranked high enough to clip the output then the amp is being overdriven and is producing a higher average output power then when it's not being driven to clipping. It's the high(er) average output power that will cause the speaker damage.
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OK...thanks for the reply...underdrive....as in... say take a 500 watt rated rms speaker....run a 100 watt amp...clipped into that speaker...probably get about 150 watts or so of CLIPPED power into that speaker. It will fail due to voice coil burnout.

I'm not talking about your ears will hear it..just the fact that clipping and the compresed, loud, straight signal, (simular to dc) will fry a speaker.
 
#42
ricplyrz said:
I was being funny, sarcastic.....I will refrain from this...as it is difficult when you can't hear a persons voice or see their body launguage. It was in jest.
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Yes well where I come from that's the kind of thing primary school teachers say to their 5 year olds, I understood that it was not meant seriously just I failed to see why you felt the need to add it. And belive it or not, the smiley at the end of my post indicated I was being sarcastic too. Hey anyway, it's too late for this around here, let's just drop it. Just saying that you're fighting a loosing cause here and I can't really see why.
 
#45
ricplyrz said:
OK...thanks for the reply...underdrive....as in... say take a 500 watt rated rms speaker....run a 100 watt amp...clipped into that speaker...probably get about 150 watts or so of CLIPPED power into that speaker. It will fail due to voice coil burnout.
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No, it probably won't because 150 watts will heat the voice coil less than the 500 watts continuous power that the loudspeaker is rated for.

I'm not talking about your ears will hear it..just the fact that clipping and the compresed, loud, straight signal, (simular to dc) will fry a speaker.
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And again, clipping is not DC, nor is it similar to DC.
 
#47
ricplyrz said:
OK...thanks for the reply...underdrive....as in... say take a 500 watt rated rms speaker....run a 100 watt amp...clipped into that speaker...probably get about 150 watts or so of CLIPPED power into that speaker. It will fail due to voice coil burnout.
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Then you're really overdriving that speaker, aren't you?:)
 
#51
ricplyrz said:
Nope..underdriving...but with a nasty signal.....
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Then that wouldn't blow the speaker. It's not the nasty signal that's damaging the speaker, it's the amount of power that it's trying to dissipate.

If you're "underdriving" a speaker then you've got no problem. If you put enough average power into your speaker to damage it - either from a clipped or clean signal - then you've overdriven that speaker.
 
#52
Herman said:
Then that wouldn't blow the speaker. It's not the nasty signal that's damaging the speaker, it's the amount of power that it's trying to dissipate.

If you're "underdriving" a speaker then you've got no problem. If you put enough average power into your speaker to damage it - either from a clipped or clean signal - then you've overdriven that speaker.
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A speaker has to move to dissapate heat. If a signal that is compresed and always pushing that speaker and not allowing it to move and vent..literaly..then it will eventualy fail. That's my belife on this and I belive it to be true. But I will always listen.
 
#54
Bob Lee (QSC) said:
Why wouldn't the speaker be moving?
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Bob, a musical signal is an ever changing signal right. With hi levels and low levels and breaks in the middle, or pauses for a better term.

Now a "clipped" signal is a high powered, distorted, compresed..(has alot more information in it) signal that does not allow for as much, (let me correct myself) movement in that speaker, as it was designed, for it to propertly cool down. Would you aggree?

This is where the information I got was trying to make a point that it's like a dc signal.(clipping that is)..it may still have alternating peaks a bit...but it is closer to a dc type signal than an alternating one.
 
#56
You're really hung up on the DC thing, and it's clouding your understanding. Forget the DC.

Put an audio signal into a loudspeaker driver, and it'll move, whether the signal is clipped or not. Audio is AC, not DC. If you put DC into a driver, the cone will move out to a position where the pull of the surround and spider equal the push of the voice coil, and it will stop. It will be silent. You may burn it out if you put in high enough power. But it is not audio, and it doesn't resemble a clipped signal.
 
#57
Bob Lee (QSC) said:
You're really hung up on the DC thing, and it's clouding your understanding. Forget the DC.

Put an audio signal into a loudspeaker driver, and it'll move, whether the signal is clipped or not. Audio is AC, not DC. If you put DC into a driver, the cone will move out to a position where the pull of the surround and spider equal the push of the voice coil, and it will stop. It will be silent. You may burn it out if you put in high enough power. But it is not audio, and it doesn't resemble a clipped signal.
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Yeah, that one article has that in my head.......
 
#60
Herman said:
Does a speaker really rely on the movement of it's cone to cool itself anyway?
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To some extent. It radiates heat into the magnet structure, and IIRC that's the main cooling mechanism; the back-and-forth of air from the cone's movement helps. I'll check with some of the loudspeaker engineers next door.
 

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