db6500 independent power ratings?

charrison

Hey Everybody,

I'm considering buying the db6500's. I eventually want to get a 2nd amp and power the tweeters independently of the midrange. Will the tweeters and mids still take 100 watts by themselves? If not, does anybody know what kind of power they can take? I plan on using a high quality crossover, so I will still be able to put the correct frequencies to each type of driver. It's just power that I'm worried about. Thanks in advance.

MacLeod

Remember, a 200 watt amp isnt putting out 200 watts all the time. Your car can do 100 MPH, but do you start it up at 100 and always drive at 100?

You can use a 200 watt amp on 100 watt speakers and itll give you more headroom and dynamics BUT you have to be very very careful with gain and volume settings. Safest way would be to get a 50x4 amp and send 50 watts to each tweeter and 50 to each mid.

audiobliss

To respond to your question in your original thread, the RMS watt handling of the db6500 should have nothing to do with you clipping your amp and thus frying your speakers. I'm not exactly sure what I was saying by that, but forget it, lol.

neomagus00

i'd feel safe putting 70-90 watts to the mid, and up to 150 of really clean power on the tweet (for dynamics - you'll never use all of it, but it allows you to put the tweets in the sweet spot, without worrying about blowing them).

jimmyjam_

I ran 150W to a set of db 6.75s and they loved it. I eventually replaced the the woofer with something beefier and biamped with the db tweeter, fed it 100W but to blend it with the woofer but the gain settings were probably limiting it to around 50W i would imagine. it was pretty loud.

i was trying to destroy them when I got my SR6500 set, fed the db tweets 100W xovered at 500hz and they still didn't blow?!?!

nadams

Gee.... why not sell them on ebay and let someone else enjoy them instead of just trying to blow them up? Seems kind of wasteful...

neomagus00

you've never seen the videos of yahoos that plug their old subs into the wall?

98thumpin

lol i have never seen that personally i can imagine someone has done it wether or not they will admit it is another story

cam5860

The DB's are rated at 100 watts RMS. so I am assuming the mid woofer can handle 50 watts and the tweeter can handle 50 watts. It's much better to underpower speakers than it is to overpower them.

I know this from experience with my mmc650's. I put the momo C400.4 on them and started the gain at 12:00 clock position cranked the volume and they started sounding like ****.

Took the door panels off and checked the passive crossovers and every damn capactior was burn up in them. The plastic cover was even melted in them.

Thats why I say passive crossovers will burn up with to much power. On my DB 6500's Im running the C400.4 on them but with the gain all the way down and they sound great.

So not a lot of power needed for the DB's. 50 to 60 watts is plenty for them if you want them to last you for awhile.

98thumpin

i always thought not having enough power to the speakers is what damaged them, of course having to much will hurt them to but underpowering is just as bad, its better to have them perfectly powered

neomagus00

i'll not be getting into this, as we've discussed it ad nauseum recently, but underpowering destroys speakers through distortion (and the inherent overpowering you thereby get), and overpowering is bad for obvious reasons... both are bad, both will destroy your stuff, and both are easy to handle if you use some common sense...

98thumpin

point very well taken thats almost what i had just said. speakers like to be powerd right.

exalted512

yay for saying under powering kills speakers...freakin car audio noobs

-Cody

98thumpin

hell im a newbie and i even knew that underpower kills speakers

MacLeod

Only it doesnt. The ONLY thing that will kill a speaker (other than manufacturer defect or physical damage) is too much power and it doesnt matter if its distorted or as clean and pure as the wind driven snow. You take a speaker thatll fry at 100 watts and send it a 50 watt signal itll play it all day long regardless if its fully clipped, distorted or whatever.

People associate underpowering with hurting speakers because by using too little power (say a 50 watt amp on a 100 watt speaker) youre more likely to crank the volume up more which will be more likely to clip the amp thus make the amp spit out about twice its rated power and THATS what kills the amp. Not the distortion, not the underpowering, only when that 50 watt amp clips and spits out 150 watts to a 100 watt speaker will the speaker assume room temperature.

audiobliss

Well, right. But when that signal from the 50watt amp isn't too much for the speaker until the amp clips and sends out a distorted signal. It's not the distortion that kills the speaker, but rather the increased wattage that results from the distortion. However, since that signal doesn't become too powerful until the amp clips and starts producing a distorted signal, you can say that distortion (indirectly) kills speakers.

That make any sense?

MacLeod

It makes no sense. The distortion has absolutely nothing to do with it. My favorite analogy is say I shoot somebody with a .45 and kill them. Was it the bullet that killed them or the BANG? Same principle here. The distortion is just a the shape the wave happened to be when it reached a power level beyond the limits of the speaker. If it had been a 150 watt clean signal, it wouldve killed the speaker just the same.

cam5860

I have never killed a speaker from underpowering them. If a speaker is rated at 100 watts RMS and lets say you run 90 watts RMS to it chances are you are going to blow it.

It doesn't matter how clean the power is to much power is to much power. Heat is what kills speakers.

You have to allow for peakes if you have 90 watts on a speaker and lets say one of your favorite songs come on and you turn the volume up quickly you get a peak. Thats what kills a speaker when you are overpowering them.

Another thing is you don't know how much power your amp is putting out. The birth sheet may tell you the full RMS power but when your setting the gain you don't know how much power it's putting out.

So there's really no way to know how much power you have on a speaker in the first place. I mean with my gain all the way down it could be putting out 50 watts RMS.

My whole point is every speaker I have ever blown has been from overpowering them not underpowering them.

neomagus00

cam5860 wrote:

My whole point is every speaker I have ever blown has been from overpowering them not underpowering them.

every speaker anyone has ever blown EVER has been from overpowering, you're right

we're going in circles again, guys... too little power = nothing... too much power = speaker death... that can be straight overpowering from a too-beastly amp, even though it's clean power, or it can be clipping from a too-pansy amp, because clipping drives average power higher than the RMS rating of the amp... it's still overpowering, either way, just the first way is direct overpowering, the second way is overpowering through clipping, mistakenly referred to as 'underpowering'... end of story, we can all go home now...

MacLeod

Oh, lets just simplify this:

{ahem} I am right.