****, I didn't think this **** would be 10 pages. Y'all have fun, gotta go to class.
Sure, clipping occurs in nearly every electronic circuit. So does this mean if you are constantly taking small leaps, you can safely jump off that skyscraper as well? If you can jump up and down all day long with no ill effects, can you say jumping never killed anyone?
'Underpowering kills speakers' was a saying made popular years ago by people being lazy (myself included). Instead of explaining that people had a tendency to buy an undersized amp and then clip the hell out of it to get the output they desired from the speaker, we all just coined the phrase that undersized amps kill speakers. Well, this laziness lead people down an incorrect logic path, one we now fight against virtually every day on these boards.
My point? My point is, you are leading people down another flawed logic path for the same reason, laziness (no offense). Saying "clipping doesn't kill speakers" is a half-truth at best. Technically no, clipping itself does not hurt the speaker. But in clipping your amp, you can easily create a situation that WILL kill the speaker. Was the squared waveform the DIRECT cause of the failure? No. Just like purchasing an undersized amp was not the DIRECT cause of failure. In the end, the answer is, always has been, and can only be... heat kills speakers. BUT, clipping increases heat generation, sometimes by a drastic amount. So to start a thread simply to state that clipping does not hurt speakers is, again, a half-truth at best.
I realize you have good intentions here. Do not take my comments as negative criticism of you or your intentions here, just adding my 3 cents to the discussion.
Last edited by audioholic; 05-17-2008 at 03:10 PM.
No speaker, in the history of speakers, has ever been blown by too little power. Ever. I don't care what your friend told you, he's a dirty liar.
In SPL competition we actually like to run a slightly clipped signal. But this depends on the setup. I used to use a perfectly clean signal into the amps and then have a 5-10% clipped signal on the amp output to the subs. That was my old car with 8 MTX 1501Ds stapped to 2) 15" RFLs. and it like a full power Burp.
Clipping does not directly cause driver failure, its what you do with it.
Straight DC into a driver can blow it because of the heat created.
Amps can blow with clipped input signal and sometimes an amp can fail and cause straight DC to be sent to the driver. I have only seen this with cheap amps thou like Sony's
If simply underpowering a driver could blow it, speakers would blow everytime you had volume set at any setting other than full.
Light clipping is almost unavoidable under normal circumstances and likely will not cause harm to them speaker on the receiving end, I don't think anyone is arguing this fact... But to come out and say "Clipping doesn't kill speakers" is asking for trouble.
Drive any speaker into HEAVY clipping and you WILL have trouble on your hands, period.
Far too many subs capable of handling 1000W have been blown with amplifiers capable of producing much less for this to be untrue.
Alpine CDA-9887 - PG Xenon 100.4 - PG Xenon 600.1 - IDQ10V3(1.3cft. @ 28hz) - Polk SR6501 mids - Seas Neo's - Knuconceptz - RAAMAudio
Common sense is far from common.
Yes ma sub can and does reach mechanical limits while being underpowerded. A coil is rated for 1000watts. They can't put a rating on the mechanical because it is enclosure dependent for the most part. My IB home sub has coils totaling 1500 watts of thermal ability, but my dayotn 1000 watt plate amp which probably conservatively puts out 800watts brings them all to their mechanical limits quite easily. Your response is flat out wrong.
This discussion is ignoring mechanical limits. Like said above, it's extremely enclosure dependent and must be ignored. This thread is about thermal limits, nothing more.
No speaker, in the history of speakers, has ever been blown by too little power. Ever. I don't care what your friend told you, he's a dirty liar.
Especially if the heavy clipping can cause driver movement to become non-linear. Heat can build faster when the driver is not moving properly.
Ever hear people drive down the street with a factory stereo cranked to wear it sounds worse than dog doo? Why would they even want that much clipping. This has been one of my pet peeves my whole life.
Alpine CDA-9887 - PG Xenon 100.4 - PG Xenon 600.1 - IDQ10V3(1.3cft. @ 28hz) - Polk SR6501 mids - Seas Neo's - Knuconceptz - RAAMAudio
Common sense is far from common.
I am too lazy to read all these posts I gotta do something today. Anyways in case it hasn't be covered. It does but not directly . It raises the total power by maybe 10 to 20 percent (est. only). But why it blows speakers is because of the average power(the important stuff) is so much higher. Like say your amp puts out 1000 watts non clipped. Well due to the shape of the waves the average might be 30 percent of that power so you are getting a true 300 watts average that the coil has to dissipate. Now when you send a heavily clipped signal total power might go up to 1200 watts but the average now jumps up to 1000 watts because there aren't many peaks and dips of the music anymore. So now you literally have tripled the power to that coil. . And you are from indy. Same here what part of indy man?
Just to elaborate on what PV is saying, let's add some math...
Say you are sending subwoofer A 1500w RMS @ 1 ohm with a clean sine wave. We'll say the frequency is equal to that of a fundamental sine wave.
Voltage = SQRT(W*R) = sqrt(1500 * 1) = sqrt(1500) = 38.72v
This is RMS wattage. Divide this by .707 and you get 54.76v peak voltage.
So now we have the peak and the period of the sine wave, so lets make it into an equation we can integrate.
Y = 54.76 sin(x)
Integrate this equation from 0 to Pi, and you will get the area under the curve.
54.76*-cos(pi) - 54.76*-cos(o)
54.76 + 54.76 = 109.52 units^2
Now for the easy part. A full square wave from 0 to pi is simply multiplying the length times the height. In this case, the length is Pi and the height is 54.76 (volts)
Pi * 54.76 = 172.03
Divide 172 by 109; This will give you the percentage increase in RMS wattage.
172/109 = 157%
Multiply by the original RMS wattage.
1500* 1.57 = 2355w
Although this is the extreme case of a fully clipped signal (Which isn't too hard to achieve anyway), it shows you that you can go from 1500w to a whopping 2355 by clipping.
Edit: After doing all this work I forgot I could've pulled the 54.76 out of the equation and simply integrated sin(x) from 0 to Pi and then multiplied after !
2003 Volkswagen Jetta GLI VR6
Source: Pioneer 880 PRS *Active
Tweeters: Soon to be Hat Imagine
Midrange: Soon to be Hat Imagine
Sub: 15" SSA Icon
Box: 2.5^3 Sealed
Amp: Soundstream Tarantula 2kW
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