Setting tweeter amp gains with DMM workaround?

[andrewsfm 10+ year member]

"DMMs are only designed to measure RMS AC voltage at 60Hz. At any other frequency there is a unknown margin of error and they will report an incorrect reading." - Quote from another site.

I want to protect these tweeters, so does anyone know a trick for setting the gains on a >600Hz high pass only amp to restrict its output to below the tweeter maximum wattage?

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[gunz4me2 10+ year member]

1. Use a modern day meter that can read AC voltage at any frequency and a 1,000 Hz test tone

2. Learn to trust your ears because no matter how you set via DMM, you will never be able to verify clipping without an oscilloscope and some dummy loads. Reactive loads would be nice but you would roast your tweeters in the process if you used them as the reactive load.

Truthfully, I've only used the dmm or oscilloscope method to verify that my amplifiers wouldn't be clipping on 0 dB test tones at 3/4 volume. You need to do that when you are feeding components rated for 100 watts RMS a little more power than they are rated for. I had approximately 300 watts RMS per door on tap for those components that only handled 100 watts RMS. Power compression > clipping any day for me!

 

[andrewsfm 10+ year member]

I have your average modern day digital multimeter, but it shows different readings at different frequencies, so I don't know if I can trust it completely but after reading a review of the one I have online, the poster claims it's accurate up to 1kHz, so I will have to retest.

I've also got an o-scope as well that I use to check for clipping, but in this case I just need to check how much power is being fed to the tweets.

I guess I forgot to add in my original post, that these tweeters are rated for 25W each (Polk), and the amp I have them on is capable of putting out 100W per channel, so they won't see clipping but I need to limit the power being sent to them to a safe level.