Coax speakers, high power handling

[phantom240 5,000+ posts]

Alright, so I modified my trunk so it can take deeper speakers and now I'm looking for a pair of coax 6.5s that can handle at least 90w rms. Anyone have any suggestions?

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[Sonic. 10+ year member]

Image Dynamics XS-65

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

With a high enough crossover to cut the bass virtually all 6.5" coaxial speakers can handle 90W RMS. It doesn't take any special design to do that, especially since music is dynamic and it will rarely make the amp put out 90W.

What car is this and how much mounting depth do you have?

 

[phantom240 5,000+ posts]

Well until I removed the trunk springs and converted to gas struts, I had 2". Now I have as much depth as I desire. The biggest thing is they can't be 6.75" because of the mounting design Honda used. The current speakers are Polk shallow mounts, and I've smoked both tweeters on them. Damn electronic music, lol. It's in my 94 Honda Prelude.

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Check these out and let me know if you think they'd work for you. PVC Speaker Adapters - CNC Machined - In Stock or Custom Made

 

[phantom240 5,000+ posts]

Those are for the front speakers. The rears use a basket/mount that actually bolts to the deck, due to the angle of the rear windshield. The grille sits less than half an inch from the glass, lol. Anyways, the grille sits stop the basket, and is fastened from underneath. Then the basket it slid into the slots on the deck, and tightened down.

If the outside diameter is too large, the grille won't fit over the speaker.

 

[zako 10+ year member]

Unless you maximize SPL, one prudent strategy when you have an amplifier with 90watt RMS channels, is to get a speaker such that you can be sure you never have to send more than 60-70watts to it. I am not joking. First, the long power wires that run all the way to the trunk result in a voltage drop. Depending on the voltage it's seeing, your amplifier is now merely a 75-85 watt amp. Ok, let's assume you have a solid electrical system, enough to extract the 90watt RMS. The issue is that by definition, the moment you send 90watts to the speaker, amplifier THD goes up to 1% which is within the audible region. Granted, at this point, the distortion produced by the speaker itself is several times that number. I heard, by word of mouth, that Morel Maximo speakers have very good sensitivity (so you need to use less power to drive them) and they sound relatively good. The coaxial versions are pretty inexpensive. I also measured the voltage (playing a test tone) to see how many watts my hybrid audio imagine woofers are seeing. About 40-50watts each, which is great as I can be assured that they get an ultra clean signal from my 80watt amplifier. These are quite expensive though for a coaxial speaker.

 

[Vertex Audio Pro Seller]

Alright, so I modified my trunk so it can take deeper speakers and now I'm looking for a pair of coax 6.5s that can handle at least 90w rms. Anyone have any suggestions?

We are having a special on our CDT ES-6CFX 6.5" coaxial speakers. D2 and D4. 100 shipped. Can handle 130w rms.

 

[phantom240 5,000+ posts]

Unless you maximize SPL, one prudent strategy when you have an amplifier with 90watt RMS channels, is to get a speaker such that you can be sure you never have to send more than 60-70watts to it. I am not joking. First, the long power wires that run all the way to the trunk result in a voltage drop. Depending on the voltage it's seeing, your amplifier is now merely a 75-85 watt amp. Ok, let's assume you have a solid electrical system, enough to extract the 90watt RMS. The issue is that by definition, the moment you send 90watts to the speaker, amplifier THD goes up to 1% which is within the audible region. Granted, at this point, the distortion produced by the speaker itself is several times that number. I heard, by word of mouth, that Morel Maximo speakers have very good sensitivity (so you need to use less power to drive them) and they sound relatively good. The coaxial versions are pretty inexpensive. I also measured the voltage (playing a test tone) to see how many watts my hybrid audio imagine woofers are seeing. About 40-50watts each, which is great as I can be assured that they get an ultra clean signal from my 80watt amplifier. These are quite expensive though for a coaxial speaker.

I'm running a precision power phantom 900.4, which states 145 rms @ 4 ohms, but everyone knows that on music, I won't ever see that power. The problem is, my current speakers rated at 65w rms both have smoked tweeters. I'm going to be redoing my entire speaker setup this year, because my front stage is a mix and match of components (RE tweeters and crossovers, PG woofers), my rears have no tweets, and the poor little DD 6.5 subs have just about had enough of the amp they're on.

We are having a special on our CDT ES-6CFX 6.5" coaxial speakers. D2 and D4. 100 shipped. Can handle 130w rms.

Sweet. Lemme take a look at them and see what's up

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Unless you maximize SPL, one prudent strategy when you have an amplifier with 90watt RMS channels, is to get a speaker such that you can be sure you never have to send more than 60-70watts to it. I am not joking. First, the long power wires that run all the way to the trunk result in a voltage drop. Depending on the voltage it's seeing, your amplifier is now merely a 75-85 watt amp. Ok, let's assume you have a solid electrical system, enough to extract the 90watt RMS. The issue is that by definition, the moment you send 90watts to the speaker, amplifier THD goes up to 1% which is within the audible region. Granted, at this point, the distortion produced by the speaker itself is several times that number. I heard, by word of mouth, that Morel Maximo speakers have very good sensitivity (so you need to use less power to drive them) and they sound relatively good. The coaxial versions are pretty inexpensive. I also measured the voltage (playing a test tone) to see how many watts my hybrid audio imagine woofers are seeing. About 40-50watts each, which is great as I can be assured that they get an ultra clean signal from my 80watt amplifier. These are quite expensive though for a coaxial speaker.

I've noticed you lately have been really harping on specific amounts of Watts going to speakers, talking about maximum excursion and such. It's good to share this with others, but I think you're looking at the issue under a microscope when a magnifying glass would be adequate. Speakers don't care if they're getting 80W instead of 60W, and they don't care if the signal is 0.1% distorted or 1% distorted. If it's only getting the higher power and higher distortion during transient peaks then it's all good.

Clearly some abuse has happened in order for the tweeters to get damaged, but part of this comes from inadequate protection on the speakers. If the speakers have their power reduced by cutting out the bass with a high pass filter that would help. So far we haven't gotten that information from the OP.

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

Unless you maximize SPL, one prudent strategy when you have an amplifier with 90watt RMS channels, is to get a speaker such that you can be sure you never have to send more than 60-70watts to it. I am not joking. First, the long power wires that run all the way to the trunk result in a voltage drop. Depending on the voltage it's seeing, your amplifier is now merely a 75-85 watt amp. Ok, let's assume you have a solid electrical system, enough to extract the 90watt RMS. The issue is that by definition, the moment you send 90watts to the speaker, amplifier THD goes up to 1% which is within the audible region. Granted, at this point, the distortion produced by the speaker itself is several times that number. I heard, by word of mouth, that Morel Maximo speakers have very good sensitivity (so you need to use less power to drive them) and they sound relatively good. The coaxial versions are pretty inexpensive. I also measured the voltage (playing a test tone) to see how many watts my hybrid audio imagine woofers are seeing. About 40-50watts each, which is great as I can be assured that they get an ultra clean signal from my 80watt amplifier. These are quite expensive though for a coaxial speaker.

I've noticed you lately have been really harping on specific amounts of Watts going to speakers, talking about maximum excursion and such. It's good to share this with others, but I think you're looking at the issue under a microscope when a magnifying glass would be adequate. Speakers don't care if they're getting 80W instead of 60W, and they don't care if the signal is 0.1% distorted or 1% distorted. If it's only getting the higher power and higher distortion during transient peaks then it's all good.

Clearly some abuse has happened in order for the tweeters to get damaged, but part of this comes from inadequate protection on the speakers. If the speakers have their power reduced by cutting out the bass with a high pass filter that would help. So far we haven't gotten that information from the OP.

 

[trumpet 5,000+ posts]

I'm running a precision power phantom 900.4, which states 145 rms @ 4 ohms, but everyone knows that on music, I won't ever see that power.

Where do you have the HPF set on the amp? How did you set the gains?

 

[phantom240 5,000+ posts]

My highpass on the amp is set at 120hz at the rear, and 100hz at the front. As for how I set my gains, I set them with a cheapie DMM with test tones, and dialed the voltage output to what should have been 100w up front @ 4 ohms, 13v amp input voltage, and 80w in the rear (145 RMS is rated at 14.4v, 100 rms @12v). Of course, as the car is running, voltage will come up a bit, which is why everything was dialed down just a tad. I forget what the actual rail voltage was supposed to read however. Long story short, I set the front gains a bit higher because the speakers up there can take a bit more abuse and the crossovers have tweeter protection circuits. Those have only ruined my fun on a couple of occasions.