Here is why

SCompRacer

heiney9 wrote: »

I don't believe I ever said anywhere a 5 watt amp should be used to power LSi's. Why two people have made comments regarding that, I don't know.

H9

I gotta check my notes too....I thought this started with a Denon AVR 2310 powering LSi15's.

SCompRacer

Hey Brock, remember that protection circuitry demonstration on a pair of ESL speakers a few years back? :twisted: Talk about an amp power SPIKE amplified by the ESL transformer....I swear that was a five foot long flash of lightning. I can still smell the ozone....lol Oh wait, that was scorched ESL membrane.

heiney9

SCompRacer wrote: »

Hey Brock, remember that protection circuitry demonstration on a pair of ESL speakers a few years back? :twisted:

Yep, that's what I would call a visual aid :cheesygrin:

SCompRacer

That would have been a great youtube video! I suppose we could do it again, but my current ESL panels are arc proof. Wonder if we can make it happen with Aaron's or Doug's maggies?:cheesygrin:

FTGV

dudeinaroom wrote: »

... speakers are made for alternating currents that peak quick and drops off, when you add distortion the signal stays at the peak of the signal(clipped part) longer than it should be which heat the voice coils and can cause failure...

Correct and this clipped part of the waveform is essentially DC which ofcourse is the death knell to voice coils especially the thermally delicate tweeters.

F1nut

Ya know, when 10 people tell you that you're wrong the probability that you are is way the eff up there. In this case, it's the take it to the bank kind.

dudeinaroom

FTGV wrote: »

Correct and this clipped part of the waveform is essentially DC which ofcourse is the death knell to voice coils especially the thermally delicate tweeters.

I have explained it that way in another thread but dumbed it down on this one because it gets tiring typing the same thing over and........................................................

tonyb

dudeinaroom wrote: »

I have explained it that way in another thread but dumbed it down on this one because it gets tiring typing the same thing over and........................................................

Yep, LOL.......same goes for alot of subject matter. You can write a 3 paragraph response only to have the same question asked 2 hours later. Nature of the beast I guess.

ravaneli

Tony, you can write 10 pages of wet horse ****; that will have zero impact on the scientific truth. It is just that personal opinion and anecdotal evidence doesn't have much weight in science - that is the nature of the beast I guess.

The dude who thinks clipped signal is DC.. I mean do you know anything about DC? Or you picked that up in a post somewhere and now you are spitting it left and right. I mean you can argue if a speaker is warm or laid back or whatever lax terms the community uses that are hard to measure. But DC is a term with strictly determined meaning and you can't mess with that.

Also the tweeters are thermally delicate, but they also play the range that carries very little power. And even if thermally delicate, you still need to pass the thermal threshold of the tweeter, that is reached at certain level of power; they don't just melt at any power.

See, you cannot violate the laws of thermodynamics.. you need certain power to reach a particular heat level, and there is nothing you can do about it. No power = no heat = no melting. Get it? No melting, no overheating, no 'frying' without enough power. Physically impossible. You can feed it signal so ugly that the tweeter dies from heart attack, but it will not be from frying or melting.

You have to tell me what the physical cause of the destruction is, but you can't, because without enough power you cannot generate physical destruction. Frying is not the only cause. You can move a driver back and forth so violently that it is destroyed before the point of overheating, but you STILL need all that power to really shake that driver.

What if you feed the speaker preout signal? It is the same signal, you know, only a lot less power. Do you still think that clipped signal will destroy a speaker, even at preamp levels? I mean will anything in the physical speaker even move at this level?

See, you have to concede that you need SOME power to destroy a speaker. It is a physical, not a mental process (although for some of you it is the latter). And once you admit that preamp signal will not destroy a speaker, you have already lost the argument, because you admit that clipped signal itself cannot destroy a speaker, and you need ample power; we will no longer be arguing whether distortion itself can kill a speaker, but how much power is necessary - is it 1W or 100 or a thousand.

I mean how difficult is this to understand, you have the nerve to call me an idiot but you are incapable of basic comprehension. I am showing you the laws that require the power for the physical destruction, and you quote each other's hilarious and sometimes abolutely clueless quotes, like the guy with the DC power or clipped preamp signal being different than clipped amped signal, or distortion being detectable by the speaker at all..

heiney9

Dude let it go, you are wrong on so many levels. Seriously, this has run its course, now you're just looking like a lunatic as you continue to post. You are also slowly changing your story.

H9

FTGV

ravaneli wrote: »

The dude who thinks clipped signal is DC

Since the clipped portion of the waveform as viewed on an oscilloscope is neither rising or falling it is essentially DC .

I mean do you know anything about DC?..

Apparently not much but I'm hoping if you hang around long enough to dispell more audio myth's then my understanding will expand many fold.

tonyb

Who is saying you don't need power to clip ? I mean really....leave all your gear turned off, that will solve everything.
We all know the science , nobody is disputing the science. Your disputing the chain of events that make the science work is all thats happening in this thread.

Here's another law of science that maybe you should follow. For every action there is a reaction. Think about it.

nwohlford

FTGV wrote: »

Correct and this clipped part of the waveform is essentially DC which ofcourse is the death knell to voice coils especially the thermally delicate tweeters.

This is just not true. A square wave is a combination of the original wave plus many harmonics. The problem with a square wave is the increased energy in the upper harmonics (i.e., more energy sent to the tweeter than would happen under normal conditions).

Here is one of many sources which discusses this issue: http://www.excelsior-audio.com/Publications/Square_Waves_&_DC_Content.pdf

I disagreed with ravaneli originally because I thought he was saying that distortion had nothing to do with damaging a speaker. If he is acknowledging that distortion increases the energy in higher frequencies, so that with distortion present you are likely to damage tweeters at a lower "power" than the power rating of the speakers, I would have to agree with him.

heiney9

The problem is he shifted the focus.

Originally it was stated and agreed by everyone (except him) and supporting evidence given, that it is the distortion created when a signal is clipped because of underpowering a speaker that does the damage. He turned it around stating we were all saying that distortion (in and of itself) was destroying the speakers. No one ever said that distortion in and of itself was the culprit (lots of types and levels of distortion in the audio world). It was a nice "weave" on his part but he totally took it into another direction about something that was never said and created a new tangent that had nothing to do with this thread or the other thread.

H9

Joe08867

Ravelunatic, you are again switching. We said a clipping Amp creates distortion that kills a tweeter. Distortion fed into an amp will not kill a tweeter unless the amp itself is sent into clip at which time it will kill the speaker.

And you are really sounding like an absolute jerkoff now. Calm down and take some zanax.

steveinaz

Guys, you're wasting time talking to a brickwall. He's more concerned with winning an argument, than getting at the truth. Let him flounder.

nwohlford

heiney9 wrote: »

The problem is he shifted the focus.

Originally it was stated and agreed by everyone (except him) and supporting evidence given, that it is the distortion created when a signal is clipped because of underpowering a speaker that does the damage. He turned it around stating we were all saying that distortion (in and of itself) was destroying the speakers. No one ever said that distortion in and of itself was the culprit (lots of types and levels of distortion in the audio world). It was a nice "weave" on his part but he totally took it into another direction about something that was never said and created a new tangent that had nothing to do with this thread or the other thread.

H9

I guess I was probably giving him too much of a benefit of the doubt that he did not explain his position well enough to start with. It is interesting if you look at his link plus many similar ones that try to disprove the idea that distortion alone will damage the speaker. They all seem to overstep their valid point and end up trying to the make the point that distortion cannot damage a speaker.

A lot of people who do damage their speakers probably do it because they think there is no way there amp/AVR that is rated to 100 Watts could play too loud for speakers rated to 150 Watts, and they would have fried their speakers with or without distortion. It still is important to note that distortion will make this damage happen at a lower power than it would otherwise, and with lower impedance speakers, it will occur sooner than many people think.

FTGV

nwohlford wrote: »

This is just not true. A square wave is a combination of the original wave plus many harmonics. The problem with a square wave is the increased energy in the upper harmonics (i.e., more energy sent to the tweeter than would happen under normal conditions).

Here is one of many sources which discusses this issue: http://www.excelsior-audio.com/Publications/Square_Waves_&_DC_Content.pdf

Yes it is the excessive higher order harmonic content that poses the problem and as your link points out even though the resulting clipped waveform appears so on a scope it isn't truly DC.