power

[Black_Jesus 10+ year member]

i c it like this

say a sub is rated for 500w rms... anything over that it will blow (they arent like that but just to make a point)

a sub has thermal limits and mechanical limits, no matter what enclosure u put it in, the actual thermal limits of the sub wont change, sure you can put it in a bigass box and it will rip it apart if u send it 500w, but thats mechanical, it wont fail due to the heat generated from the power.

in a small sealed box you could send it its "rated" power and it will do fine, send it more than it can take thermally, it will blow, a sub doesnt have to even reach its xmax for it to be able to smoke.

gotta go 2 work, peece ppl

 

[jellyfish420 10+ year member]

i c it like this
say a sub is rated for 500w rms... anything over that it will blow (they arent like that but just to make a point)

a sub has thermal limits and mechanical limits, no matter what enclosure u put it in, the actual thermal limits of the sub wont change, sure you can put it in a bigass box and it will rip it apart if u send it 500w, but thats mechanical, it wont fail due to the heat generated from the power.

in a small sealed box you could send it its "rated" power and it will do fine, send it more than it can take thermally, it will blow, a sub doesnt have to even reach its xmax for it to be able to smoke.

gotta go 2 work, peece ppl

yes, a sub still has thermal limits. but for the sake of argument, you would need a lot more power in a small sealed box to hit xmax, and if it is more than the sub can take then you will prolly never hit xmax.

 

[audioholic 5,000+ posts]

Keep in mind that thermal handling of a speaker is not exact either. Yes if you grossly overpower a sub it can blow immediately. But usually thermal handling also has a time factor. The driver will handle X amount of power for Y amount of time before failure is likely. Previous stress/abuse on a driver can also contribute to this equation.

This is why you hear people say they can run 10 zillion watts to a certain sub. They burp it for just a few seconds, so the heat build up is shut off before damage is done. And just fyi, they manage cone control at these ridiculous power levels with the box specs (adjusting enclosure volume for sealed, volume and running very near tuning for ported enclosures).

 

[JimJ 5,000+ posts]

in a small sealed box you could send it its "rated" power and it will do fine, send it more than it can take thermally, it will blow, a sub doesnt have to even reach its xmax for it to be able to smoke.

very true...send a sub an assload of power very close to its tuning frequency in a ported box, and you'll smoke the woofer...thermal failure simply beacause the sub is moving very little near its tuning frequency, so the overall airflow is reduced by a lot.

 

[3.5Max6spd 10+ year member]

as for efficiant i mean that if you build(for example) a large ported box it may take 300w for your sub to reach xmax, but if you build a small ported it may take 600w to reach xmax. there for making the bigger box more efficiant

I see where you are going with this, but 'a box is not efficient'- a subs efficiency

is what dictates how well its sounds and utilizes power in a given enclosure