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<blockquote data-quote="ciaonzo" data-source="post: 6114864" data-attributes="member: 607015"><p>Frankly, I'm surprised and disappointed to learn how many people don't understand that regardless of how soft or stiff a spider or surround is, it has a limit. Period. And regardless of whether it takes 200 watts to reach Xmech or 2000 watts, once you've reached Xmech the driver is no longer behaving in a sinusoidal fashion. That might even happen before Xmech if the driver is a motor-limited design but trying to throw more power at a driver that is operating in such a manner is analogous to a clipping amplifier. Now, I've witnessed some harsh verbal beatings dished out on these boards for people who don't know how to set their gains and fall victim to clipping, so why should it be any different for you guys who break a driver because you simply didn't respect it's mechanical limits, whether it was limited by the spider, the surround, or the length of the voice coil relative to the mechanical clearance allowed. Maybe this is where all the sound quality guys get to point a finger and laugh at the SPL guys because they need something that won't break under the most brutal conditions to make up for their apparent lack of know how.</p><p></p><p>It's is very common for SQ drivers to have extremely soft spiders (and yes they will sag with gravity acting upon them if the moving mass is sufficient enough). Drivers like this respond to extremely delicate signals and sound wonderfully detailed at low-level listening while retaining dynamics. (I'll bet alot of people reading this don't even grasp the concept of low-level dynamics.) They also release the complex harmonic structures of musical passages with ease. They often times lack any sign of character that might give away their presence, possibly due to a very soft spider that isn't a stiff resonant disc making a sound of it's own, and sometimes this comes at the price of not being able to produce very high level of output that some require, though one doesn't necessarily mean the other. These attributes are not important to everyone but those who can appreciate them are likely to work within these limitations because the accuracy is most important. That's why they call it high fidelity. Many, many SQ guys turn to the DIY market for home audio drivers to use in their vehicles because they know a thing or two about driver selection and these types of drivers will provide the results they are looking for.</p><p></p><p>When it comes to SQ oriented drivers, it's about how much excursion you have to work with and how low in frequency want to play. Once you've figured that out, you can decide if you need one or two or four drivers to attain the level of output you require. Wouldn't you rather have a driver that could stroke two or three inches with 250 to 500 watts of input power so that you could run an amplifier that doesn't pull 150 amps from your electrical system and has lower THD with a higher damping factor to better control the cone motion of that driver? This seems like a no-brainer. Of course I'm dumbing it down a bit to drive home a point but surely someone is seeing the light here. Reaching the mechanical limits of a driver with only a couple of hundred watts is a good thing because you are less likely to reach the threshold of thermal compression which changes driver parameters and limits dynamics. It's good to know the thermal rating of your voice coils as a reference but it's more important to know when to stop cranking the volume and gains due to mechanical limits.</p><p></p><p>It's like when you meet that perfect woman and you just want to tear into her and see what she's got but she may not respond well to that. No, some desire a much different approach and require a certain finesse to extract the full potential she has to offer. The results are often worth the effort. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif</p><p></p><p>There's just so much more I would like to address in these threads but John is right, some people already know it all and nothing that is said will change their minds.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="ciaonzo, post: 6114864, member: 607015"] Frankly, I'm surprised and disappointed to learn how many people don't understand that regardless of how soft or stiff a spider or surround is, it has a limit. Period. And regardless of whether it takes 200 watts to reach Xmech or 2000 watts, once you've reached Xmech the driver is no longer behaving in a sinusoidal fashion. That might even happen before Xmech if the driver is a motor-limited design but trying to throw more power at a driver that is operating in such a manner is analogous to a clipping amplifier. Now, I've witnessed some harsh verbal beatings dished out on these boards for people who don't know how to set their gains and fall victim to clipping, so why should it be any different for you guys who break a driver because you simply didn't respect it's mechanical limits, whether it was limited by the spider, the surround, or the length of the voice coil relative to the mechanical clearance allowed. Maybe this is where all the sound quality guys get to point a finger and laugh at the SPL guys because they need something that won't break under the most brutal conditions to make up for their apparent lack of know how. It's is very common for SQ drivers to have extremely soft spiders (and yes they will sag with gravity acting upon them if the moving mass is sufficient enough). Drivers like this respond to extremely delicate signals and sound wonderfully detailed at low-level listening while retaining dynamics. (I'll bet alot of people reading this don't even grasp the concept of low-level dynamics.) They also release the complex harmonic structures of musical passages with ease. They often times lack any sign of character that might give away their presence, possibly due to a very soft spider that isn't a stiff resonant disc making a sound of it's own, and sometimes this comes at the price of not being able to produce very high level of output that some require, though one doesn't necessarily mean the other. These attributes are not important to everyone but those who can appreciate them are likely to work within these limitations because the accuracy is most important. That's why they call it high fidelity. Many, many SQ guys turn to the DIY market for home audio drivers to use in their vehicles because they know a thing or two about driver selection and these types of drivers will provide the results they are looking for. When it comes to SQ oriented drivers, it's about how much excursion you have to work with and how low in frequency want to play. Once you've figured that out, you can decide if you need one or two or four drivers to attain the level of output you require. Wouldn't you rather have a driver that could stroke two or three inches with 250 to 500 watts of input power so that you could run an amplifier that doesn't pull 150 amps from your electrical system and has lower THD with a higher damping factor to better control the cone motion of that driver? This seems like a no-brainer. Of course I'm dumbing it down a bit to drive home a point but surely someone is seeing the light here. Reaching the mechanical limits of a driver with only a couple of hundred watts is a good thing because you are less likely to reach the threshold of thermal compression which changes driver parameters and limits dynamics. It's good to know the thermal rating of your voice coils as a reference but it's more important to know when to stop cranking the volume and gains due to mechanical limits. It's like when you meet that perfect woman and you just want to tear into her and see what she's got but she may not respond well to that. No, some desire a much different approach and require a certain finesse to extract the full potential she has to offer. The results are often worth the effort. [IMG]//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif[/IMG] There's just so much more I would like to address in these threads but John is right, some people already know it all and nothing that is said will change their minds. [/QUOTE]
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