Speaker ?

[opus007]

If a speaker cabinet holds a 50watt tweeter,100watt mid and 150 watt woofer,what would the total watts of the cabinet?Would it be 250 watts.Sorry if this sounds like a dumb question.And would a 150 watt RMS/300 watt peak 3-way crossover handle this ?

[sreten]

speaker rating = 150W so the crossover will be fine /sreten.

[wintermute]

The speaker ratings don't add together, the lowest rated driver will tend to set the max wattage the speaker can handle, however this is where it gets tricky.

Often things like tweeters are rated at for instance 100W system power. The tweeter itself may only be rated at a few watts RMS, but when crossed over at a certain freq with a certain order crossover it can handle 100W RMS because it is only getting a tiny fraction of the total power.

So if your Speakers ratings are all RMS, then 150W will be roughly the max power the speaker can handle (since the most energy is in the bass), however if the 50W rating on the tweeter is system power rather than RMS, then provided you use the recommended crossover freq (or higher) and order (ie slope 6db/12db/18db per octave) then the speaker will probably only handle 50W or so (even though you have 150W woofers, and 100W mids).

so as Sreten said you should have no problems with a Xover rated at 150W. I just got the impression you had some misconceptions about power ratings which needed some additional sorting

One other thing which I'll mention, since you sound like a newbe and I've known many people who have this misconception, the power rating of the speakers has nothing to do with how loud they will be, it is simply the maximum power the speakers can handle without being damaged. Yes if you have sufficiently powerfull amp you may be able to make higher wattage speakers play louder, but not necessarily, the efficiency of the drivers is much more important in determining how loud they will be.

Regards,

Tony.

[opus007]

Yes a newbie I am.And thanks for the explaination.I want to find out more about all this as I have an old pair of Fisher cabs that I replaced all the drivers in.And put in a store bought crossover.I sort of got help with what drivers to use from my local speaker repair and dealer.It has taken me months of changing out speakers to get the right sound I wanted.The current setup is a KLH Tweeter(I tried a infinity and another brand that was just way to bright and added a lot of sibilance before going with the KLH).The mid is a Pioneer and 15" woofer a Eminence with 3-way Eminence cross overs.(all 8ohms)I am thinking of buying "The Loudspeaker CookBook" will this explain to me neded valuable info or is there other books out there better.I maybe a newbie here but have lurked and belong to other forums(all audio) and some times you guys go way over my head and I have no idea what you are talking about.I just found this forum yesterday and started reading the posts and feel this is a real good place for me to get some good info and help.So if some of my posts seem like I do not have a clue it is because I do not.And I appreciate any and all help.

[wintermute]

Don't worry a lot of it goes over my head too. There are all different levels of experience here

The loudspeaker design cookbook is pretty heavy going (might put you off), I only just recently got it, before that I used (and still refer to) Designing, Building, and Testing Your Own Speaker System 4th Ed by David B Weems. It's not as technical, but gives a good grounding. There is another one by Weems that others have also recommended, I think it is Great Sound Stereo Speaker Manual but I haven't seen this one myself.

Sounds like you have been down a similar path to me (although I suspect I have been at it a bit longer). I'm just about to embark on designing something from scratch xovers and all, but up till now I've had a variety of drivers (and xovers) which I've used in the same cabinets, some changes were for the better some for the worse, sometimes I didn't know why, but now I'm starting to understand a whole lot more

Regards,

Tony.