clipping

[Fast1one 10+ year member]

No, you can't sorry, well you can, but it's not magic. A low powered clipped signal won't hurt a speaker. I could take my 100 watt amp turn the gains all the way up and play test tones all day. There's simply not enough thermal energy there to overheat.
Amps can put out way more than rated power, just not without clipping, that's why speakers die. Since the original wavefrom is no longer being generated (tops are "clipped" off), you lose excursion over a clean signal with the the same power. During clipping an amp is being pushed do it's limits, sometimes putting out over 2x the power its' rated at. Meaning you 500 watt amp is now putting out 1000 watts to a 1000 watt rated sub. However since it's not a clean signal, you are loosing excursion, meaning your getting less air flow than the designers intended to the sub to have at 1000 watts. This buildup of energy will eventually fry the sub.

It's the same reason why if you build too small a box you may not be able to give a sub RMS wattage. You'll never reach mechanical limits in that box. Meaning your giving it RMS without full cooling, aka fryed speaker.

Explained exactly how I was going to put it thank you....saved me the type....
Have you been reading bcae1? //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/biggrin.gif.d71a5d36fcbab170f2364c9f2e3946cb.gif Sounds very similar....

 

[T3mpest 10+ year member]

I think I read it once many moons ago, but other than just something I picked up after 100's of hours of forum browsing.

 

[xluben 10+ year member]

yep, that explaination is pretty much exactly what everyone could have learned if they read the original link i posted //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/smile.gif.1ebc41e1811405b213edfc4622c41e27.gif

 

[Blazemore 10+ year member]

Just to add....to see what clipping looks like you'll need an oscope. When you look at a undistorted signal with a oscope it will look like a nice and consistent curvy line. But once the volume is turned up enough, the top and bottom start to flatten out and compress. When the volume is turned up even further the cruvy wave will then turn into a sqaure looking wave meaning clipping. The more area you have under the curve the more power your speakers will be seeing.

 

[coolahan 10+ year member]

set your gains right and don't push ur subs 2 clippin.. ding ding.. lets gets it on

 

[W1V2 10+ year member]

Alright then thanks everyone.

 

[dkguitarist 5,000+ posts]

if the amp (jl 250/1)is clipping and starts to heat up shouldnt it go into thermal mode? but wont it most likely blow the subs first

if the amp is seeing a proper load, it will not heat up clipping or not, so yes, the sub WILL go waaaaaaay before the amp ever will (unless due to user error).