Return to quoting peak wattages?

[Korladis]

But the testing still won't stop people from cranking up the volume or EQ.

It's more a cultural problem, with a lot of modern music trying to simply get louder and over the top. How many threads to we hear where bassists are trying to compete with guitarists?

It isn't a competition...it's supposed to be a musical ensemble. The idea is to play together, not to be the loudest on stage.

I like being loud (hey, I'm a metalhead, give me a break) but volume wars don't help anybody. Last gig I played, the guitarists were both using combos. Everyone's amp was miced though, so it didn't really matter, we we worked with each other and the soundman instead of being at loggerheads, and everything sounded fine.

 

[Gearhead43]

I agree that alot of this blowing drivers business has to do with user experience level and how educated you are about your gear. You really need to use your ears, and how can you do that if you are so loud you can't hear s***?

I played in a heavy reggae band where bass was the loudest thing in the band for 10 years and never blew any speakers. I used a 350 watt Trace head thru an 8x10 and rattled peoples fillings out, and my band knew how not to play too loud for our music and vocals.

The amount of power some heads have nowdays seems pretty excessive, IMO. I like having alot of power too, but use it for clean headroom, not to blast people into next week.

 

[rbonner]

No, I saw it, and point taken. The thing is, though, your tastes are quite...um...unique, and I wonder how much your 1500w/200w thing applies to most cabs, or if it's just because you're trying to get a cab to do something it's not supposed to do.

But yeah, if a cab will blow with 200w worth of power at the 30-75 hz range, I think they should rate it at 200w. It'll never happen, but we can hope for it and world peace

No that info is directly downloaded right off the Eminence website in the pro audio section on the Kilomax PRO 18A, go to cabinet designs and look at its performance in almost ANY of the designs by Jerry in engineering.

The thing runs out of XMAX in just about every configuration before its max power at some frequency.

It's a whomping driver, but this unit is the prime example of a speaker that doesn't live up to its max power rating in the real world.

The point is, a Speaker Driver is a device, a tool... A power load.... With special and peculiar characteristics. There is just not ONE RATING for a speaker. It's a complex device and just changing one or two cabinet parameters can make a great speaker perform like mush and vice versa.

Its not like rating a Shelby Cobra 500 Horse Power, it's more like rating something where you play it on the desk and it explodes, or build a fantastic cabinet for it and it is the best thing in the world. A speaker is in its own world.

BOB

 

[tombowlus]

Maybe if some third party started testing different amps under the same conditions, or as similar as possible and publishing the results in some sort of chart form.

That is a great idea!

 

[RickenBoogie]

I'm still not so sure there is a solution. The way things are is not likely to change, but the way we all use this gear CAN change. Just common sense. I don't play in a band that requires tons of dirt with a sub-octave effect, but it seems like alot of the players who do, (not professionals) are using very small speaker cabs, (1x12, 2x10, etc) How many threads have you read asking what can I add to my 1x12 combo to get my distorted-sub-octave-black-death-metal-tones above a 100 watt Marshall 8x12 stack? I believe this is where all the "I blew my spkr cab" threads originate.

 

[billfitzmaurice]

When A cab is farting, it's reaching the drivers limits.

Not exactly. When the cab farts out the voice coil has reached its linear excursion limit, but that in no way endangers the driver. In fact, guitar drivers are purposely built with very small xmax so that they'll fart out at very low power, as little as 5 watts for a 100 watt driver not being unusual. When more power is applied after displacement limits are reached output is non-linear, and distorted tone is the result. But that doesn't kill the driver.

The problem when you put more power into a driver than its displacement can make use of is you exacerbate the thermal power compression issue. From the standpoint of durability a lower xmax is actually beneficial, since the higher distortion for a given power input will better warn you of potential danger.

The highest rate of driver attrition occurs in folded horn subwoofers, where the combination of very long excursion drivers and acoustical filtering of harmonic distortion completely masks any warning signs of driver distress before voice coil burn out.

 

[UncleBalsamic]

What exactly would going past xlim do?

 

[billfitzmaurice]

What exactly would going past xlim do?

Shatter the voice coil or crease the cone or tear the suspension or all three. But most drivers will toast the coil well before reaching xlim.

 

[SpamBot]

What exactly would going past xlim do?

Make a big repair bill.

 

[lowfunk99]

It doesn't help that they really never explain how to hook cabinets up either. People don't pay attention to ohms or know how to properly load an amp. I have only had one speaker blow in 25+ years of playing. Shear luck I think.

 

[UncleBalsamic]

Shatter the voice coil or crease the cone or tear the suspension or all three. But most drivers will toast the coil well before reaching xlim.

Thanks Bill.

 

[NortyFiner]

I've been playing since 1989 and NEVER blown a speaker. Yet, anyway. Watch, now that I said that, my amp will probably blow up tonight just to spite me. Which would be fine, since it would give me an excuse to fulfill my amp GAS.

Anywho, my current amp is a Behringer BXL1800A, rated at 180W according to the maker. I recall reading someplace (here?) that Behringer puts peak ratings on its amps instead of RMS ratings to make them sound bigger than they are. But in terms of being safer on pushing the limits, I guess knowing the peak rating is a good thing...

 

[greenboy]

Shatter the voice coil or crease the cone or tear the suspension or all three. But most drivers will toast the coil well before reaching xlim.

Maybe. But a lot more of the damaged drivers I've seen in recent years, have been ones that might still make a sound but no longer have a good coil gap alignment, or have creases, or small rips in surround. A lot of the reports here are also of that variety, with rubs, or intermittents, or distorting with any slight input.

Edit: Some attribute it with bigger amps but since drivers have also come along, I think the low B, downtuning, box not tuned for it crest factor thing is coming into play more often these days.

 

[JimmyM]

I'm still not so sure there is a solution. The way things are is not likely to change, but the way we all use this gear CAN change. Just common sense. I don't play in a band that requires tons of dirt with a sub-octave effect, but it seems like alot of the players who do, (not professionals) are using very small speaker cabs, (1x12, 2x10, etc) How many threads have you read asking what can I add to my 1x12 combo to get my distorted-sub-octave-black-death-metal-tones above a 100 watt Marshall 8x12 stack? I believe this is where all the "I blew my spkr cab" threads originate.

You know, you're probably right. Where there is gear, there is always someone willing to abuse it. I thought it would help to make people more aware of a peak wattage past the clean wattage, but it more than likely won't help, people being what they are. And you can't legislate against dumbness

 

[Rick Auricchio]

Another problem is definitely the combination of lower-priced gear and general affluence in the US. (Never mind the current economy, I'm talking about baby-boomer affluence. We generally have more disposable income to spend on our kids than our parents did for us.)

The result is a parental willingness to buy the kid what he wants, and that gear often gets abused, either due to ignorance or youthful exuberance. We don't buy our 17-year-old a fast sports car, because we fear an accident (and auto insurance would be prohibitive).

But where's the harm in getting my son that guitar half-stack he wants? It isn't that expensive; music is an artistic expression; it keeps him away from bad things. And we're the Woodstock Generation! Just thinking about young people performing reminds us of our youth. We understand when he says that little combo is uncool.

Unfortunately, the young bassist starts out with a huge disadvantage against those arena-capable guitar amplifiers.

 

[Bob Lee (QSC)]

Maybe among bass players do you see loudspeaker driver damage from overexcursion predominate over thermal damage. After all, we play bass, and many of us boost the hell out of the low end and don't use any high-pass filtering.

In semi-pro and pro audio, I think the mix seems to tilt more toward thermal (overpowering). Burned and melted voice coils, misaligned or partially detached coil formers due to softened adhesives, etc.

IMHO, amp power should be stated in continuous average (also known by the misnomer "RMS power") using reasonably rigorous methods such as the FTC Amplifier Rule. (EIA is okay but not as rigorous.) There are some other international power spec standards by IEC and possibly some other groups, but I'm not really familiar with them. Amp "peak" or "music" power specs aren't really well defined (but often well puffed up), so comparing them is really like comparing apples and dogs.

 

[nysbob]

I agree somewhat that the current trend of guys going with smaller and smaller cabs is part of the problem. Modern driver technology has come leaps and bounds, but there's only so much a single 12" or 2X10 cab can do.

The only power rating I ever look at is RMS - I don't like using equipment outside its design parameters.

That's probably why I can bring 30 year old gear to a gig and not worry about it at all.

 

[JimmyM]

I agree somewhat that the current trend of guys going with smaller and smaller cabs is part of the problem. Modern driver technology has come leaps and bounds, but there's only so much a single 12" or 2X10 cab can do.

The only power rating I ever look at is RMS - I don't like using equipment outside its design parameters.

That's probably why I can bring 30 year old gear to a gig and not worry about it at all.

Same here, Bob, although I have to admit to cranking the dog crap out of my B-15's on occasion Of course, I do it with a much higher power handling driver than the original CTS's. My original post was how a lot of people mistake RMS or continuous power for the knobs cranked all the way up instead of just the clean power. But the more I'm hearing in this thread, the less effective I think publishing peak ratings will be in preventing blown speakers. I just bum out over it on behalf of those who blow them because I know a lot of folks can't afford to be replacing speakers all the time, and so many people on here seem to be completely clueless about the limitations of their gear.

 

[RickenBoogie]

That's a good reason to come here to TB BEFORE going crazy with the low eq and insane volumes. Plenty of great info that could very well prevent alot of abuse.

 

[greenboy]

This'll probably ruffle some feathers too, but a lot of styles favored by younger players are strong on distorted textures and short on actually listening to the things that signal driver failure. More than I can count on fingers and toes I've heard at jams and shows, sharp hard cracking sounds on some notes of the type that's saying that either a driver has taken a major hit on the motor, or that someone's cresting way beyond mild clipping.

But the player seems to pay it little mind until "technical difficulties" stop the act ; }

EDIT: I suspect a lot of times they don't even notice they've lost a driver until a band practice or two down the road.