I was driving my subs pretty hard today and I accidently turned up the volume too high for a short period of time, and I was worried that I may have caused some damage to them.
I don't know if they bottomed out because the time they were loud was so short but it still made me wonder if they got damaged. They're not rubbing and sound fine, I'm just really paranoid about blowing up my drivers...
I then proceeded to play some test tones to see how loud my subs would go but I chickened out before turning them too high for fear of blowing them so I never saw the speakers bottom out and I couldn't hear the amp clipping. Saying that, I think I caused the amp to clip slightly at one point when playing a 25Hz tone. As I'm powering my subs with a 40w 25 year old Trio (now kenwood) amp, clipping is a concern.
Is it possible for a driver to be "slightly" blown as a result of all this "abuse", so it wont sound as good as it did but still works? I've got the whole OCD thing going on about damaging the sound quality of my speakers
Edit: ARGH, I accidently did it again. I'm running my hifi from a PC and this media player makes it entirely too easy to accidently turn the volume right up if you accidently jerk the mouse. Unfortunately it scales up the waveform digitally and this time it definately clipped and sent TONS of distorted **** to my speakers and now I'm really worried (but they still seem to work fine). I'm going to build some proper equipment now, I'm sick of this stupid setup. I need a preamp.
I don't know if they bottomed out because the time they were loud was so short but it still made me wonder if they got damaged. They're not rubbing and sound fine, I'm just really paranoid about blowing up my drivers...
I then proceeded to play some test tones to see how loud my subs would go but I chickened out before turning them too high for fear of blowing them so I never saw the speakers bottom out and I couldn't hear the amp clipping. Saying that, I think I caused the amp to clip slightly at one point when playing a 25Hz tone. As I'm powering my subs with a 40w 25 year old Trio (now kenwood) amp, clipping is a concern.
Is it possible for a driver to be "slightly" blown as a result of all this "abuse", so it wont sound as good as it did but still works? I've got the whole OCD thing going on about damaging the sound quality of my speakers
Edit: ARGH, I accidently did it again. I'm running my hifi from a PC and this media player makes it entirely too easy to accidently turn the volume right up if you accidently jerk the mouse. Unfortunately it scales up the waveform digitally and this time it definately clipped and sent TONS of distorted **** to my speakers and now I'm really worried (but they still seem to work fine). I'm going to build some proper equipment now, I'm sick of this stupid setup. I need a preamp.
LOL, don't worry too much my friend.
When clipping, the amplifier will send about 80W RMS. The subwoofer driver voicecoil can easily take that, especially for short periods of time.
If you don't bottom the driver too often, you won't break anything.
For the tweeter, just listen to it and you'll know if it's damaged. If it's protected by a proper 2nd order x-over or higher order, I wouldn't worry much about it.
To break a subwoofer, you need serious clipping, at least two times the RMS rating of the driver for at least a dozen of seconds. I mean, the copper need vaporize, you need serious power to do that. To break the suspension, foam is kind of strong, you'll need to abuse it alot under tuning to definitely break it.
When clipping, the amplifier will send about 80W RMS. The subwoofer driver voicecoil can easily take that, especially for short periods of time.
If you don't bottom the driver too often, you won't break anything.
For the tweeter, just listen to it and you'll know if it's damaged. If it's protected by a proper 2nd order x-over or higher order, I wouldn't worry much about it.
To break a subwoofer, you need serious clipping, at least two times the RMS rating of the driver for at least a dozen of seconds. I mean, the copper need vaporize, you need serious power to do that. To break the suspension, foam is kind of strong, you'll need to abuse it alot under tuning to definitely break it.
Well, the tweeter's on a 1st order crossover, but the time I was clipping was only about 1 second maximum. I don't drive my equipment hard usually so thats why its such a big worry. I'll have a listen later and see how it sounds.
I'm sure the sub could handle 80 or even 100 watts for a second As for the suspension, it's made of rubber so it's strong enough
I'm sure the sub could handle 80 or even 100 watts for a second
As for the suspension, it's made of rubber so it's strong enough
Talking about blowing tweeters, a girl I know just blew the tweeter in 4 Infinity Primus 150 satellites hehe!
She was testing her new Creative X-Fi with udial.wav hehe!
The udial test is lots of HF to test the bad IMD in the HF range of the older Creative soundcards. The new X-Fi have improved resampling so the card pass the udial.wav test.
These speakers got a 2nd order x-over at 3.3 kHz. She heard rattling when testing, so overexcursion with a 2nd order x-over that high? Is that possible? Her amp is a Pioneer (100W/ch) and was at -23 dB so I'd guess around 1W RMS per channel.
I wonder what happened, do you guys have any idea? It's impossible to blow tweeters with 1W RMS IMHO...
She was testing her new Creative X-Fi with udial.wav hehe!
The udial test is lots of HF to test the bad IMD in the HF range of the older Creative soundcards. The new X-Fi have improved resampling so the card pass the udial.wav test.
These speakers got a 2nd order x-over at 3.3 kHz. She heard rattling when testing, so overexcursion with a 2nd order x-over that high? Is that possible? Her amp is a Pioneer (100W/ch) and was at -23 dB so I'd guess around 1W RMS per channel.
I wonder what happened, do you guys have any idea? It's impossible to blow tweeters with 1W RMS IMHO...
The amp dial may be pointing to -23dB but that is completely irrelevant if your source output voltage is not exactly the same as the amp sensitivity, which in the case of most hifi amps isn't.
If you allow 10dB error (likely) then that's about 10W. Shouldn't be enough to blow a tweeter with proper crossover. Maybe she just heard some nasty resonance.
If you allow 10dB error (likely) then that's about 10W. Shouldn't be enough to blow a tweeter with proper crossover. Maybe she just heard some nasty resonance.
I had a wierd "kinda blown" incident with one of my MTX subs..
I was "testing" a sub amp I had built,and managed to knock a resistor or something loose while fiddling,and got DC on the output for a second or so before I hit the power switch..(a good reason to triple/quadruple check your soldering!)
One driver was making a "rubbing" noise..so I removed it and set it aside,thinking I had just fried it..
I connected it back up the next day,and it was still rubbing,and sounded nasty,surely I toasted it..
A few weeks later,I grabbed the fried driver to use as a "test" speaker,just to see if an amp was working.. -It sounded fine!
I reinstalled it in the box,and it's been fine ever since..
I guess it just needed a break..I let it sit for a while,and it seems perfectly fine now?
I was "testing" a sub amp I had built,and managed to knock a resistor or something loose while fiddling,and got DC on the output for a second or so before I hit the power switch..(a good reason to triple/quadruple check your soldering!)
One driver was making a "rubbing" noise..so I removed it and set it aside,thinking I had just fried it..
I connected it back up the next day,and it was still rubbing,and sounded nasty,surely I toasted it..
A few weeks later,I grabbed the fried driver to use as a "test" speaker,just to see if an amp was working.. -It sounded fine!
I reinstalled it in the box,and it's been fine ever since..
I guess it just needed a break..I let it sit for a while,and it seems perfectly fine now?
Hi guys,
you're pretty irresponsible Better to use some limiter and don't worry about that Usually used in PA, I know, but I find it useful even on Hi-fi!
Anyway, before I built my new PA midhighs, I had used 20 yrs old speakers - 50W RMS 12" + 10 W tweeter (TESLA - Czech brand - you know, during that period of communists in our country you couldn't buy anything else (except for some russian stuff)), and I was driving them on 40 W homemade amp (without clip limiter) with regular clips of 10dB, the tweeters went out few times, but when I connected them back again after few days - they seemed to be OK and are still working!
So - no need to worry about your speakers while clippin' them for few secs
you're pretty irresponsible
Better to use some limiter and don't worry about that Usually used in PA, I know, but I find it useful even on Hi-fi!Anyway, before I built my new PA midhighs, I had used 20 yrs old speakers - 50W RMS 12" + 10 W tweeter (TESLA - Czech brand - you know, during that period of communists in our country you couldn't buy anything else (except for some russian stuff)), and I was driving them on 40 W homemade amp (without clip limiter) with regular clips of 10dB, the tweeters went out few times, but when I connected them back again after few days - they seemed to be OK and are still working!
So - no need to worry about your speakers while clippin' them for few secs
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