Power handling of component sets

[Unregistered]

I have a question about how power is distributed to the various speakers in a component speaker set.

For example, suppose a company manufactures a midrange and a tweeter that it sells seperately.

Supose that the listed power handling for both the midrange and the tweeter is 100wRMS. This means that if you bought the tweeter or the midrange individually and hooked it up to an amp you would run 100wRMS to it.

Now, suppose this same company offers the tweeter and the midrange as a component set that is connected by a passive crossover.

Common sense would seem to dictate that since the midrange can handle 100wRMS and the tweeter can handle 100wRMS, you would need to put a total of 200wRMS into the component set so each speaker would get its full power. The 200wRMS would be divided between the midrange and the tweeter so that 100wRMS is going to both.

However, this is usually not the case. Usually, when a company offers a midrange and a tweeter as a component set, the power rating for the component set is the same as it would be for the individual drivers by themselves. That is, it would still be 100wRMS.

What is the deal here? How come you don't have to put twice the power in when you hook up a midrange and a tweeter together with a passive crossover? If the midrange and tweeter both handle 100wRMS by themselves and you only hook up a 100wRMS amp to the set, wouldn't each driver only be getting about 50wRMS instead of its full 100?

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[natem33 10+ year member]

I believed that I have the correct answer for that question. A component set with both a tweeter and a midrange that handle 100 watts RMS each would only need an amp that supplies 100 watts RMS to each component set. The reason is that there is 100 watts RMS flowing into one set, into the crossover. The Crossover does not divide the power between the speakers but divides the frequency that is being delivered to each speaker. For example: the tweeter would receive 100 watts RMS in a frequency range of 10,000 - 22,000 hz, and midrange would recieve 100 watts RMS of 60 - 10,000 hz.(The frequency range is just an example and not an actual specification).