Rsd 12 smelling burnt on only 300 rms?

[stipud]

fuck man I give up. When I read that, I hear "a little amp can't blow a speaker" but seriously I give up............

I had no idea that this was a chicken or egg discussion I had entered.

Wonderful strawman argument! Because we never said anything about clipping, did we? Clearly our entire argument can be summed up conveniently as "A LITTLE AMP CAN'T BLOW A SPEAKER"!! Yes Scott, that's exactly what we were saying

[Bfowler]

as jacob mentioned, its scientifically imposable to blow a sub on too little power

what am I misreading in that? I did not take it out of the middle of a sentence, misquote it or take it out of context. What does that say?

you DID take that out of context.

you left out the lines that followed it which explained that phrase

so you quite literally TOOK the quote OUT OF the CONTEXT it was in

[Jacampb2]

How about this Scott, a properly set up "little amp" provided with clean unclipped AC input signal and delivering clean unclipped AC output will never blow a speaker that has been honestly rated by the manufacturer for a power handling higher than what said "little amp" can produce while still adhering to the above restrictions.

I hate to argue the point still, but it is not a chicken or an egg argument. It is ALL about the end user, it is not the amp's fault. A properly sized amplifier can be driven into clipping just as easily as a under sized amplifier. The properly sized amp will blow the speaker even faster. It is all about the end user wanting more. Do you think the end user that cranked the gains and bass boost on that "little amp" to try to get more output is not going to try to squeeze more output out of an even larger amp? It is human nature to want more and more and more. They are going to push the equipment until it breaks. The thing is, if they had a properly sized or over sized amp, the conclusion many will be likely to draw will be that he over powered the speaker and blew it. This is quite possible, especially with a over sized amp, but it is just as likely that the end user was totally responsible, drove the amplifier into hard clipping, and blew the speaker.

Anyhow Scott, you started by saying that you had seen many subs blown by deck power, then many high powered 6x9's blown by deck power, and now you're saying that you just don't want noobs to think that you cannot blow a sub with a under sized amp. So yeah, you didn't say 4 watts could blow a subwoofer, but you started out pretty dang close to that...

The offer still stands, I'll run one of my speakers off a HU amp for as long as you want. I may even be persuaded to hook up a old Jl12W6 to a old Clarion HU crank it up till the amplifier is in hard clipping and see what dies first the sub or the internal amp. Anyone want to put money on it?

Later,
Jason

[ttocs]

You can blow an amp from too little power just as you can from too much. Make sure it is staying clean and not clipping.

ya know what I am going to stick by what I said at the very very beginning because it is true. You can twist it around that it is the clipping that does it but the clipping is a result of the amp trying to put out more power then it can, and it could be fixed with a more powerfull amp that is ran clean and not into clipping. Keep twisting it around if you want but I know what I know and am tired of this ruse on words you guys like to play.

continue discussin this on your own, I will bite my tongue until it bleeds next time it is brought up.

[ttocs]

How about this Scott, a properly set up "little amp" provided with clean unclipped AC input signal and delivering clean unclipped AC output will never blow a speaker that has been honestly rated by the manufacturer for a power handling higher than what said "little amp" can produce while still adhering to the above restrictions.

I hate to argue the point still, but it is not a chicken or an egg argument. It is ALL about the end user, it is not the amp's fault. A properly sized amplifier can be driven into clipping just as easily as a under sized amplifier. The properly sized amp will blow the speaker even faster. It is all about the end user wanting more. Do you think the end user that cranked the gains and bass boost on that "little amp" to try to get more output is not going to try to squeeze more output out of an even larger amp? It is human nature to want more and more and more. They are going to push the equipment until it breaks. The thing is, if they had a properly sized or over sized amp, the conclusion many will be likely to draw will be that he over powered the speaker and blew it. This is quite possible, especially with a over sized amp, but it is just as likely that the end user was totally responsible, drove the amplifier into hard clipping, and blew the speaker.

Anyhow Scott, you started by saying that you had seen many subs blown by deck power, then many high powered 6x9's blown by deck power, and now you're saying that you just don't want noobs to think that you cannot blow a sub with a under sized amp. So yeah, you didn't say 4 watts could blow a subwoofer, but you started out pretty dang close to that...

The offer still stands, I'll run one of my speakers off a HU amp for as long as you want. I may even be persuaded to hook up a old Jl12W6 to a old Clarion HU crank it up till the amplifier is in hard clipping and see what dies first the sub or the internal amp. Anyone want to put money on it?

Later,
Jason

you guys do what ever the fuck ya want, really it is all you know......... grid was smart enough to bow out and leave it alone, wish I had followed his lead....

look at what I said above, turn it into what ever you want.

[audiophyle_247]

I gotta laugh at this thread.
You guys are all arguing the same damn thing, everyone is on the same chapter here just not the same page. lol
& BCAE1.com is an awesome site, Ive read that site many times over & still learn shit every time.

ttocs is not arguing that a small amp WILL kill a sub, he is arguing that it CAN. Driven too hard (into clipping) a small amp can kill big subs, which everyone on here will agree to. The argument is over nothing more than a stupid technicality, which for some reason ttocs isnt seeing.



From my 10+ years of professional experience installing, this is what I have found in regard to blown speakers.

Small amps can easily be driven into clipping, which can cause damage to speakers. The average Joe does not hear distortion, shocking but true. Its truly amazing what some people actually think sounds good. This combination = death for subs, and as said before its almost human nature to want as much as possible from the sound systems. Thus the amps are overdriven & the speakers suffer until eventually giving up the ghost, leaving the owner DUMBfounded.

These people then upgrade to bigger amps, and have better results. Why?
With bigger amps the subs hit their mechanical limits before the amps reach severe clipping, which is very audible to even a complete idiot. This is why less people blow subs from too big of an amp, because the damage being done can actually be heard without having to pay too much attention, so they turn it down until noise goes away, saving their speakers.



That said, I find bass boosts & loud settings increase clipping potential quickly, and I tend to steer away from all of it. OP, turn the bass boost off & try turning the gain up a little more.

[NewOldStock]

What kinda customer hooks any sub up to deck power??? A 16 year old perhaps?

the same kind that puts home speakers in the back hatch of their car wired from the head-unit powered rear speakers... like I saw a couple days ago while heading into the store.

that was impressive. She seemed really proud of them.

[ReneBMW]

as far as i know a clipped signal has sort of DC voltage where there should be AC voltage, and a speaker cant handle DC voltage and gets very hot.
I thought that was why it can blow...

[Kurt Wild]

Good news guys! I can explain why clipping can kill subs regardless of the amp power rating.

Here goes. A sub voice coil has to dissipate all the power fed into it or else the vc temperature begins to rise. The voice coil dissipates heat mainly through convection which is driven by cone excursion.

A good example is feeding a moderate amount of DC into a sub. It may only mount up to a few watts but with no excursion there is close to no convection and the vc temp rises and eventually fries.

There is a fine balance between input power and excursion. The more power the more excursion and more heat convection. Right?

But what about clipping? When clipping an amp hard we are feeding more and more power into a sub but the excursion does not continue rising. All the extra power introduced by clipping is essentially higher frequencies, which do not add excursion. So the fine balance between power and excursion is tipped and the voice coil begins to heat up

An amp can produce twice its RMS rating when clipped so hard its pushing square wave. Thus toy amp manufacturers' "max power" ratings are typically twice the RMS. .

And we all know this clipping business can go on for hours. Eventully the sub fries. Without adequate excursion a sub can fry even at low power.

Obviously a 1 watt amp clipping hard or 1 watt of DC wont fry a big sub because it can dissipate some power without excursion, but I hope you get the point.

[MW3]

Not that I am going to get in the middle of this mess.

But keep in mind tweeters and woofers are very different animals when it comes to power handling, failures and clipping tolerances....

My 2 cents...

[Eric D]

I want to throw this out to stir the pot...

15 years of experience might actually be worthless. I only say this because I have met countless installers who learned everything they know in the first 3 to 6 months on the job, then followed this knowledge as a religion for the rest of their career.

I worked with an installer who had over 20 years of experience. He taught me a whole lot of the "voodoo" being covered in this thread. When I started figuring out what was really going on, he surprisingly was willing to learn and adjust his knowledge. Now he has a better understanding of the facts of electricity, and admits to his lack of knowledge from the past.

I would guess the first five years I spent as an installer were filled with countless events I could not explain at all. Once I started learning about how electricity worked, I could finally start explaining these things instead of just "guessing" what was going on. In my case it took actually going to college to get the facts straight. No amount of car audio tech papers (written mostly by other installers I am sure), or manuals, or trial and error was helping explain these events.

Sadly, car audio is not really a place where one can keep building their knowledge. You generally learn everything there is to know about it in a short period of time. But, you either learn the truth or the fiction. Then over the following years you start to sort out the fiction. If everyone actually had the facts from the start, car audio would be a whole different animal today.