HA! Almost forgot about this install!!!

[supraman1379 10+ year member]

actually just to fuel this blaze.. you can overpower a sub past its rms as long as its clean power... most subs with the right box can survive for years to come even with excess NON CLIPPED power

^^not always but some times

//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/eyebrow.gif.fe2c18d8720fe8c7eaed347b21ea05a5.gif No

 

[DBfan187 5,000+ posts]

Mansville Smith describes in post #7 what i know/had heard of how clipping effect avg power output... (thus the 'and periods of high current draw' in my first post) -- i had combined this concept with the idea that a speaker would be 'stuck' at the ends of it's excursion for the clipped signals squared duration but it makes sense that it would bounce around some and not be totally still. Nevertheless, bouncing at the end of excursion rather than moving entirely through a wavelength has to make some difference in thermal handling, even if it's not a big one. I do believe that the primary cause of heating is the fact that your RMS wattage goes way up when you try to push a clipped signal...i guess i should take the concept of no cone movement out of the equation for the most part. Thanks for the link, DBfan...it'd been a while since i read that explanation.

sorta.....

A clipped signal carries more average power than a non-clipped signal... this is the only aspect of it that affects a speaker thermally.
It doesn't matter if the signal is clipped before the amp at the preamp level or after the amp.

A sine wave can damage a speaker in a matter of seconds given enough power and in a matter of minutes at fairly moderate output... it depends on the impedance of the speaker at that particular frequency... if the impedance happens to be low, it might go up in smoke in a couple of minutes.

Only way a voicecoil burns up ... "prematurely" or otherwise ... is excessive electrical input power, converted to heat in the coil's resistance.
Now, since amplifiers are like voltage sources, power is ~V^2/R. So you've only got two options for explaining coil burn-up:

1. A surprisingly large RMS voltage may be delivered to the coil during amp clipping, as described (very well, in good detail) above. Well, "surprisingly large" ... to someone that hasn't gone through the calculations //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif

2. The input impedance of the coil drops during clipping, allowing more current to flow and therefore more heat. I think there's a possibility of this, IF the sub reaches an excursion limit (motional impedance dropping to simply voicecoil resistance, allowing more current to flow through the coil, therefore more heat). But I sure don't see it from amplifier clipping.

Bottom line : Coils burn from excessive power, nothing to do with waveform shape. If you want to explain burned coils, you gotta explain where the extra power came from ... pure & simple

 

[delvryboy 5,000+ posts]

it's the increased power of the clipped amp that will kill it, this would fall under "overpowering".

you'll usually see this when the rms of the amp is matched closely to the rms of the sub and overdriven. if you have a 1000w rms sub, you can send it a fully clipped signal from a 100w rms amps all day long. try that with a 800~100w rms amp and you'll have a dead sub in no time.

on another note, i called up an orion tech a while back.... " you have to send the H2 a minimum of 1000w, anything less and it will blow from underpowering":eyebrow:

 

[NJack2AF 10+ year member]

it's the increased power of the clipped amp that will kill it, this would fall under "overpowering".
you'll usually see this when the rms of the amp is matched closely to the rms of the sub and overdriven. if you have a 1000w rms sub, you can send it a fully clipped signal from a 100w rms amps all day long. try that with a 800~100w rms amp and you'll have a dead sub in no time.

on another note, i called up an orion tech a while back.... " you have to send the H2 a minimum of 1000w, anything less and it will blow from underpowering":eyebrow:

He may have just thought you were an idiot and didn't feel like explaining clipping to you //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/wink.gif.608e3ea05f1a9f98611af0861652f8fb.gif