I will be receiving a pair of infinity kappa perfect 6.1's within an hour that will replace my polk audio mm6 components. The problem I have is that currently I'm putting about 200w/channel to them, and they are rated for something like 150W RMS. No problems with that much power so far, and I don't turn them up loud enough to use all that power. The new Infinitys are only rated to 100W RMS, but have 400W peak power handling. Significantly more dynamic range than my Polks. So, the question: is it wise to run 200W RMS to these speakers? I know it's almost always better to overpower than underpower, but is this pushing the limit?
I also want to use my Eclipse CD8053's internal x-over rather than the supplied one, which I would be forced to use if you guys say I should only run the 100 watts, making me run them off one channel of my amp. Currently I am bi-amping (or is it bi-wiring?) my mids and tweets (one channel to mid, one to tweet).
I also want to use my Eclipse CD8053's internal x-over rather than the supplied one, which I would be forced to use if you guys say I should only run the 100 watts, making me run them off one channel of my amp. Currently I am bi-amping (or is it bi-wiring?) my mids and tweets (one channel to mid, one to tweet).
Thanks guys. I already have the amp in there and have sacrificed the space, so that's not an issue. Now I'm a little pissed off because I realized my Polk's were 6.75" not 6.5", and therefore my MDF rings won't work with these new infinitys. Guess I have to finally buy a router and some MDF. Ugh.
Just because your amplifier is (supposedly) capable of outputting 200 watts does not mean that it puts out that much power. It will only put out 200W when you turn it up *REALLLLLLY* loud. So long as you do not hear any distortion (and still have working ears), you are fine. just watch out for bottoming out the woofer. I find no need to "match" the power levels of amplifiers and speakers. pay no attention to "peak" watts. In all honesty, I don't pay much attention to any kind of wattages at all. especially on car stuff.
Each amplifier is individually tested for its output prior to leaving the factory, and mine was tested to be 110Watts@4ohms/channel, so I assume that's at least 200Watts when bridged. I know that it is not always putting out 200W RMS, unless I'm feeding it a pure sine wave at full amplitude. I also understand that it's bad to clip, but I doubt that would happen when I am overpowering and have set my gains correctly. Bottoming out the woofer is exactly what I'm worrying about, I guess I should have stated that. I mean, how bad is it to bottom it out even once?Dr. Photon said:
I also know that peak watts aren't what you should really pay attention to, but peak watts is not completely useless, as it shows the amount of headroom the amplifier has. It was my understanding that on music that is very dynamic (especially classical), headroom is a very important aspect of the amplifier. How do you not pay attention to wattage at all? You certainly wouldn't power some big low-efficiency drivers with a 10Watt amp, would you? I know the difference between 50 and 100 watts isn't a whole lot (something like a 20% increase in loudness, right?), but 10W and 100W... that's double the loudness. Anyway, thanks for your advice, it seems like I don't really need to worry about it.
Bottoming out destroys loudspeakers (and of course the sound they are playing). The obvious fix for that is a high-pass filter.
Anyway, no matter the outrageus and ridiculous power handling figures stated by manufacturers, excursion always limits the signal amplitude that a 6" speaker can reliably reproduce at low frequencies, particularly when it's not placed in a rock-solid air-tight box.
In other words, if you turn the cavity where your speaker is mounted into a rock-solid air-tight box, it will produce more output with less excursion and better LF power handling. Factory mounting holes are terrible.
Anyway, no matter the outrageus and ridiculous power handling figures stated by manufacturers, excursion always limits the signal amplitude that a 6" speaker can reliably reproduce at low frequencies, particularly when it's not placed in a rock-solid air-tight box.
In other words, if you turn the cavity where your speaker is mounted into a rock-solid air-tight box, it will produce more output with less excursion and better LF power handling. Factory mounting holes are terrible.
- Status
- This old topic is closed. If you want to reopen this topic, contact a moderator using the "Report Post" button.