Hi, I've got a crown XLS2000 (2100W 4ohm bridge or 2x 650W 4ohm channels) and I'm looking at getting a dayton mx15-22. I see a lot of people pushing insane power (one guy I saw had his 2 MX15s running on 3kW each).
So would 2100W be safe enough as long as I don't play test tones? And when doing sweeps maybe dial the amp volume back to 8-9? The box would be 5-6cu ft tuned to 21-23hz. Thanks!
So would 2100W be safe enough as long as I don't play test tones? And when doing sweeps maybe dial the amp volume back to 8-9? The box would be 5-6cu ft tuned to 21-23hz. Thanks!
Depends on the crest factor of the program material, some music has the same crest factor as a sine wave.
Typically, music has more like an 8/1 peak to average, reaching 2100 watt peaks would average ~260 watts, which could be OK with a speaker rated at "800 watts RMS Power Handling.
The "amp volume" has little to do with it's output voltage, turn the volume down-3dB, input up +3dB and the same output appears.
800 watts requires ~56.6 volts into 4 ohms, 2100 watts is ~91.6 volts.
Limit the amp according to your music.
Hello Art,
In the past I made a program using matlab language to calculate crest factor from a wave file (music), I made some analysis from some very heavy bass electronic music I had but I never found one even close to a sine wave Crest Factor (CF = 3).
Do you have any sample?
In general there are always much more then one single frequency playing and CF rises.
best regards
I use the same amp mono bridge to one B&C 15NW100 1000w in tapped horn box for out indor events never had problem.I suggest Add the right low cut filter 24db play heavy bass tracks and look carefully the excursion and heard the bass not to be distorted and set the right gain on the DSP. Depend of the box you have mount the speaker take care for thermal limits.Last the limiters on the DSP processor if you have and never disable limiters on the amp.
No, I don't personally.
Most of the music I listen to has dynamic range (DR) minimums of 10 or more dB.
https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/view/215483
That site lists hundreds of tracks with portions of songs with 3 and 4dB DR.
Skrillex seems to be one of the "winners" in the loudness war with as low as 2dB DR.
Metallica's "Death Magnetic" comes in with similar DR, but probably not as much low end.
Art
Probably, when the CF/DR goes to 3dB the amplitude might be low too, so the amount of energy going to driver wouldn't be that high.
Audio is very hard sometimes, and look to two variable at the same time isn't easy. To avoid deviate from OP I'm going to open separate thread.
Thank for sharing the website.
A lot depends on how loud you will go with it. In general for pa use (pushing it to the limits) you count 1.4 to 2x recommended program power (1600w for this driver), that is 2250 to 3200w amp power in 4R for this driver.
But if you use this for hifi on non-deafing levels, your amp in mono bridge is more than enough to have enough headroom for the most demanding music. You don't want above 105dB/1m RMS in a normal living room or HT room anyway, and that needs 100 W RMS, so maybe 200W peak for the most demanding music. More is not bad. Your crown will do, even non bridged, for that scenario.
But if you use this for hifi on non-deafing levels, your amp in mono bridge is more than enough to have enough headroom for the most demanding music. You don't want above 105dB/1m RMS in a normal living room or HT room anyway, and that needs 100 W RMS, so maybe 200W peak for the most demanding music. More is not bad. Your crown will do, even non bridged, for that scenario.
I was told that it is easier to destroy a 18" sub using a 100 watt amp, then using a 1000 watt amp on the same sub. Over driving the amp can cause DC voltage to get passed to the speaker. The Dayton you are looking at is a dual voice coil 2 ohm. I am guessing you are going to series the coils to a 4 ohm load and run your Crown at 4 ohms mono? I or you can run it in stereo or a coil on each channel. The amp is 2 ohms stable. That Dayton would love that much power! I use a SMD-Distortion Detector to find the limits of my signal and amplifier output. But, sometimes the best device to pickup distortion is your ears. If it sounds bad turn it down.
It depends on how hard you drive it. If you push it to the limit of the amp, it will go into oscillation and sends a sinus like signal to the woofer that will burn. But if you respect the gain structure (or limit before the imput of the amp below the max volume) this won't happen. You blow speakers by overheating the magnet mostly, and that often comes by overdriving the amp input. But you will hear a nasty sound way before you are there, and if you're not to high or drunk you will turn down the signal. And with this amp/speaker combo your are probally there at volumes that you are already deaf in a hifi situation. For pa or dj use i would recommend a +3kW/4R amp altough.
It's not clipping I'm worried about, its feeding 2100W into an 800W subwoofer. But from what people have said it sounds like it would work just fine. I'd also rather run it on 4ohm bridged because then I only have 1 volume knob for the sub rather than 2.
90% of the time it won't be super loud, I don't want to rattle the house to pieces and ive got a bunch of lego that could fall off my shelves if I crank it. But when I do crank it up to have some fun or run HT at some point I just wanted to make sure it was okay to run 2100W. I've been running 2100W on my 2 400W 10" subs and they've taken it very well so far. I think they may have come close to bottoming out quite a few times, but that's mainly because my DSP boosts the very low end a tad because they're only tuned to 38hz. I reckon the dayton should take it well.
When I do build it, I'll post a build log either here or avsforum with measurements. (Speaking of measaurements, don't suppose you guys have experience with the primo em273, em258, or dayton imm-6? Can't pick between them) Anyways, thanks for the advice guys. I'll be sure to let it rip.
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When the clip/limit light illuminates, the Crown XLS2000 is reaching ~2100W peak bridged mono in to a 4Ω load.
When the -10 light illuminates, it is reaching 210W, -20 is ~two watts.
Crown considers 1/8th Power Pink Noise (12dB crest factor) typical of program material "just at clip", 1/3 power "extreme clip".
So typical music may have about 1/8 average power compared to peak, 100 watts may average ~12.5 watts, 33 watts with extreme clipping.
An amp driven into hard clipping can put out a higher average signal, perhaps approaching 100 watts from a 100 watt amp driven into 100% distortion.
The average signal level is what burns voice coils.
A clipped 1000 watt amp could put out 10 times the average power of a clipped 100 watt amp.
The clipped 1000 watt amp may destroy the sub as much as 10 times faster.
From an excursion standpoint, unlikely to tear up a subwoofer with a 100 watt peak, but possible with 1000 watts.
If a sine wave was turned into a square wave from hard clipping, it would contain +3dB more power with the same peak voltage.
That said, no matter how hard the amp is driven, an AC input will still result in an AC output.
The more clipping, the higher the duty cycle, decreasing heating time.
Art
No. A 1000w sub would likely handle a 250w squarewave indefinitely, a 100w amp might produce 200w driven into obscene clipping but even then much of the extra energy generated is at higher frequencies where the inductance of that large voice naturally filters it out. Drivers get damaged from being overpowered, it does not matter what the signal looks like or how much distortion it contains, the ONLY factors that matter are if the continuous average power level exceeds the drivers long term continuous(thermal) power handling or if excursion limits are exceeded resulting is physical coil damage. Given that is very unlikely the 100w amp could hurt a modern high power sub. On the other hand a 1000w amp could melt it in under 30 seconds without ever getting anywhere near clipping, all it would take is a sustained synth tone at about 1/2 output.
No. Any decent quality or better amp will have DC protection built-in, and despite what it often repeated on the web the flat portions of a square wave do not qualify as DC.