Rsd 12 smelling burnt on only 300 rms?

[Jacampb2]

Oh, and to answer your question, the BCAE website is authored by a guy named Perry Babin, I know he is a electronics tech, and is also author to a few other similar educational websites as well as offering a training DVD that teaches basic amplifier repair and electronics trouble shooting. Although I have not seen it myself, from what I have heard, the training DVD is excellent. I have read the entire BCAE website and I can say that it is one of the most accurate and complete guides to basic car audio that is available on line.

Later,
Jason

[Jacampb2]

If you read my first post in this thread I explain exactly how people blow speakers with too little power. Its exactly what you guys are saying.

Yes, you are correct, and I did see that, the thing is that the root cause is still the user, not the power rating of the amplifier, and a HU internal amp can be driven into clipping just as easily as an external amp. That is why a 100w 6x9 can be blown by a 16w HU.

Later,
Jason

[eulogious]

Don't get me wrong, personal experiences are good, but you when you try to argue them as facts with nothing to back them up, that's when it get's silly. That's all I am getting at. If you can prove the underpowering a speaker will blow it, then I will go with that until it can be unproven. But so far the math and every thing else says you can't do it.

Now the owner/user is a different matter. Most of the time it's people who blow the speakers, not the equipment itself.

[gridracer]

Anyway all arguing aside the original poster in my opinion blew his sub from 3 things 1 gain to high up 2 bass boost cranked and 3 trying to play it louder than the amp can safely play it without clipping. bottom line user error.

[lukeman269]

Haha this is funny, this topic really turned into a big argument. Funny stuff. Anyways, I did not blow my sub or anything like that. I started to smell it burn so i turned it off. The sub still plays great. So for my amp that only runs 300 rms. What would be a safe gain level for the sub?

[eulogious]

I would use a DMM to set the amp gains so that you are putting out 300watts. Using some math and then measuring the output of the amp, you can get it close to actually seeing 300watts.

It would be better/superior to use an O scope, but not everyone has access to one of those. There should be a link in the how-to on using a DMM for your gains.

[ttocs]

Look, I can see how you would arrive at that conclusion, with the scenario that you are now giving us, but it is still not too little power, the root cause is the user trying to get more output than what amplifier in question can provide by driving the amp into clipping and driving the speaker with what amounts to nearly DC input.

I am not going to argue anymore about this as you will not change my 15 yrs of experience with internet links to argue the semantics of what makes the speaker stop working. THis paragraph above makes me laugh. It is not too little power, it is an amp that is trying to supply too much power. Well then if he had a bigger, more powerfull amp that had been ran correctly this would not have happened. Yes if he had operated the lower power amp correctly it would not have happened anyway, but the way you word your semantics to me tells someone with out any experience that they will never end up with a bad speaker if the go with a little amp and its just not the case.

I am sorry that I can't site the references that I have witnessed over the years to support this but really just sorry that I opened this can of worms to begin with. I will bite my tung on this one just like I do when you recomend tuning an amp with a volt meter. I have asked industry pros about that as well and they all said the same thing, never done it never will, bad idea........ Again I forgot on this site and other diy'r sites that industry experience means nothing, I need to have a link to a wiki site to be credible.....

[ttocs]

Haha this is funny, this topic really turned into a big argument. Funny stuff. Anyways, I did not blow my sub or anything like that. I started to smell it burn so i turned it off. The sub still plays great. So for my amp that only runs 300 rms. What would be a safe gain level for the sub?

your meter will never fail you

[ttocs]

If you read my first post in this thread I explain exactly how people blow speakers with too little power. Its exactly what you guys are saying.

Yes, you are correct, and I did see that, the thing is that the root cause is still the user, not the power rating of the amplifier, and a HU internal amp can be driven into clipping just as easily as an external amp. That is why a 100w 6x9 can be blown by a 16w HU.

Later,
Jason

no, as long as the rated power of the speaker is 4x the output of the amp it is impossible for that amp to blow the speaker I thought?

[kg1961]

No one will ever convince me that too little power will not blow a speaker. I have seen it too many times. Over 15 years I have probably installed 500 speakers in cars off deck power, and I have seen lots come back with blown speakers if not from too little power than what? they aren't pushing on them while playing in the doors or putting stuff on top of them. I guess me and ttocs just don't install properly or we both had the same supplier for speakers and they were a bad batch.

Yes are car deck can blow speaker when they are rated at 50x4 you really get 18watts of the dirtest shit watts and almost all deck clip on the amp chips to get to 18w
deck power is not power its noise. If a kid or customer only had there deck turn up with out bass boast, xbass and other shit and only turn them up to 1/2 or less they will never ever blow speaker
most kid turn up the deck with all the crap turned up to get more sound to were the deck is clipping. I worked At A&B sound for many years when Tom came down to push on the speaker ..lol Kids and some younger people don't seem to not know what there gear can or should do and run it way harder. It like a car run it every day at red line or more and see what happens.Or runn it a 2000 rpm i will run for ever
I agree you can not damaged speaker with to little watts that why sub and speaker have a rating 35-300 so if you have a clean 35 watt amp you will damaged the speakers faster than a 150 or 300 watt amp. no but if you are trying to get more sound out of the same speaekr with the smaller amp and start to clip the amp thats a differnt story.
Im not a bass head and the most up untill this last year or 2 i have ever ran a sub with more power than 25-300watts and my mid 30-75. I have never had to go higher than that to get what i like for sound. Also HU deck upgraded wiring ect will always help.
I did blow a mb quart tweeter in 1997 with a m25v2 as I hard clipped the amp listening to 2pac and the cap got so hot it poped and the tweeter dyied but that was my fault not the speaker or amps fault. that the only speaker i have ever damaged

[eulogious]

It would be better/superior to use an O scope, but not everyone has access to one of those. There should be a link in the how-to on using a DMM for your gains.

I will bite my tung on this one just like I do when you recomend tuning an amp with a volt meter. I have asked industry pros about that as well and they all said the same thing, never done it never will, bad idea........ Again I forgot on this site and other diy'r sites that industry experience means nothing, I need to have a link to a wiki site to be credible.....

It's funny when you don't read the whole post and then post stupid retorts likes this. Not everyone has access to a O scope or can afford to buy one to tune their system once, that's why I recommend using a DMM, but also stated that an o scope would be better.

Do you have a better way than a DMM or a scope, or are you just trying to be an ass here? Seriously, offer better ways to do something rather than just bash another way because you don't think it works better even though it might. If gain setting with a DMM sucks so much, figure out a better way without an O scope that might actually help people rather than commenting and being an ass for no reason.

Personal experiences are good to add onto facts, but again you are trying to use it as a fact and still trying to argue it's a fact with no facts to back it up. Hell Jason even offered a test, but for some reason you don't want to take him up on that because you "know better", and personal experience says he is wrong, even if science/tests proves you wrong and that's just dumb to be that stubborn, but to each their own If I am wrong, I like to be corrected so that I don't have wrong information and so that I don't pass on the wrong information to others, regardless of how I personally feel about the info or about the person that proved me wrong. Facts are facts until proven wrong...

[Stryker]

epic thread....
Clipping blows speakers, not under powering them.
I've only ever blown one speaker....An orion 8"that i was driving the snot out of with an old alpine ampin the early 90's. i know now that i was clipping it hard had no clue waaaay back but meh learned a lil.

[kg1961]

after reading all this... Agree with you Corey this is what came to mind

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XF2ayWcJfxo

enjoyed the 90's when we were all younger and not so smart..lol

[lukeman269]

So I do have a DMM. How would I test it on my amp to see how many watts I am pushing? Any Links? Or maybe a good explaination?

[dwnrodeo]

http://phoenixphorum.com/gain-setting-w ... vt280.html

[stipud]

No offense intended, but physics and electrical laws, not some obscure theory and creative guesswork, say that this is impossible. Do the math and see for yourself. What do you think happens when you turn the volume down? Do you think your amplifier puts out the rated amount of wattage all the time that it is on?

THIS. Times a million.

If you're listening at low volumes with a big aftermarket amp, you are still "underpowering" a woofer... why does it not burn up? Because it's not clipping!

If you hook any speaker up to a headunit and play its maximum unclipped voltage into the speaker, it will never blow. The issue arises when the user (who is dumb enough to hook a sub up to the headunit in the first place) inevitably maxes out bass boost and LOUDNESS and runs the volume way past clipping, expecting it to sound like their buddy's ride with the big amps! Playing square waves, even from a headunit, can fry even much higher wattage speakers!

Assuming a headunit was playing 10 watts of clean, unclipped A/C voltage, then having big aftermarket amp with the volume set down to produce 10 watts of clean, unclipped A/C voltage is no different! A watt is a watt is a watt, regardless of the source. Obviously there is another factor at work here, and that is CLIPPING.

Your argument that the BCAE guy is some hack is ridiculous. Go read through the whole site... I am sure you will feel enlightened (and stupid) afterwards. He explains everything in fundamental physics terms and formulas. Seriously: http://www.bcae1.com/

On the contrary, your whole argument is based on anecdotal evidence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence), which is a fundamentally logically flawed argument to begin with. Specifically this point:

Evidence, which may itself be true and verifiable, used to deduce a conclusion which does not follow from it, usually by generalizing from an insufficient amount of evidence. For example "my grandfather smoked like a chimney and died healthy in a car crash at the age of 99" does not disprove the proposition that "smoking markedly increases the probability of cancer and heart disease at a relatively early age". In this case, the evidence may itself be true, but does not warrant the conclusion.

As Loogie and I have tried to tell you many times, you should really try backing up your arguments with at least some sort of logical evidence, facts, formulas, or any substance other than plugging your ears and saying "na na na I can't hear you" and just calling our logic "false" because you say so.

Do you not question WHY your experiences happened? Are you totally sure that your initial GUESS as to why the speakers were blowing was correct? Is it really, fundamentally because of underpowering, or is there some other factor going on that you just didn't think about? Think critically! You've even had several other installers come in here and chime in that their personal experiences match yours AND YET they ALSO agree with our logic! None of us are denying your personal experiences could have happened. Clearly this occurs all the time, because BCAE has an entire page dedicated to the topic, and as I said, it's one of my most pasted links on the forum. Clipping kills!

Now I feel like breaking your balls a little harder today because you are bitching about the DMM topic again. You keep arguing the same point; that installers don't use DMM's. Well NO SHIT. They have oscilloscopes, which are OBVIOUSLY the right tool for the job (none of us have EVER disagreed on that point). However, the point you always miss is that we are talking about two totally different audiences and purposes here. A multimeter is something that a layman will have. Is it the perfect tool for setting amp gains? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Is it better than cranking your gains and bass boosts ignorantly, without knowing what they do? ABSOLUTELY.

With a multimeter and a basic understanding of physics (v=sqrt(i*w)), you can easily measure for the unclipped rated output voltage of your amplifier. This only works with a few assumptions:
- You are not clipping the signal further up the chain
- Your amplifier's power rating is actually true
- Your multimeter is not malfunctioning

Now with an oscilloscope we don't need to worry about any of those assumptions, as it shows us the waveform along every step of the way. We can eliminate clipping all the way down the chain, and even push our amplifiers beyond their rated wattage, if there is some headroom. With an oscilloscope you will get the absolute lowest noisefloor and the most power possible, without a doubt.

Now does that mean the DMM method is useless? Of course not. The issues posed by these assumptions are quite possible to minimize:

You are not clipping the signal further up the chain
- Lower the headunit volume to 3/4 or so, since they rarely clip at this point
- Use your ears to listen for clipping (although this is less reliable than you would expect, especially if the user does not have the experience that you and I do)
- Use clip lights, where possible, if the rated output of a device is unknown
- Etc...

Your amplifier's power rating is actually true
- Buy Phoenix Gold. Nuf said.

Your multimeter is not malfunctioning
- Don't use a broken multimeter. Duh.


I look forward to your well backed logical retort, without any ad hominem, strawmen or anecdotes

[ttocs]

this site is funny. I asked who wrote the article, never said anything about him as I do not know him. He might know what he is talking about or he might be that software engineer that showed how to hook up a lantern battery to your car.

Like I said, this place is funny that 15 yrs of industry is experience is worthless unless I can get wiki to back me up but this is not the first time I have been told I was wrong when I know better. So, I did a search and I found the last paragraph of this artcle interesting.

http://www.tech-faq.com/how-speakers-blow.html

don't know who they are, if they know a speaker from a paper bag but you want link so there you go. Now this all the chicken or the egg bullshit since I agree that clipping causes the speaker to blow but for some reason we differ on the fact that if the amp was properly powered it would not be clipping right?

The point that brought up the voltmeter debate again is because NONE of the experts I asked(top experts on the net) said they would EVER recomend using a meter to tune an amp. What would they use instead? Their ears amazingly enough but for some reason you guys have always thought it was black magic to do this and a $10 meter made by the cheapest builder will do better.

[fuzzysnuggleduck]

That write up incorrectly states that speakers clip when they are sent "too much" power.

Speakers don't clip. The terminology used is incorrect.

Clipping is a term reserved for overdriving amplifiers into square wave production.

[stipud]

this site is funny. I asked who wrote the article, never said anything about him as I do not know him. He might know what he is talking about or he might be that software engineer that showed how to hook up a lantern battery to your car.

Like I said, this place is funny that 15 yrs of industry is experience is worthless unless I can get wiki to back me up but this is not the first time I have been told I was wrong when I know better.So, I did a search and I found the last paragraph of this artcle interesting.

http://www.tech-faq.com/how-speakers-blow.html

don't know who they are, if they know a speaker from a paper bag but you want link so there you go. Now this all the chicken or the egg bullshit since I agree that clipping causes the speaker to blow but for some reason we differ on the fact that if the amp was properly powered it would not be clipping right?

The point that brought up the voltmeter debate again is because NONE of the experts I asked(top experts on the net) said they would EVER recomend using a meter to tune an amp. What would they use instead? Their ears amazingly enough but for some reason you guys have always thought it was black magic to do this and a $10 meter made by the cheapest builder will do better.

Alright, where do I start...

First of all, 15 years of industry experience is NOT and NEVER WILL BE worthless on this forum. It means a hell of a lot. Nobody has even once disputed that your personal experiences have occurred, in fact many have joined in the discussion to validate it with similar experiences of their own. We are only debating the conclusions, which you have drawn from that experience, as they are incorrect.

I could turn this argument around on you as well. What makes you think that your 15 years of field experience invalidates well established scientific facts, based on thousands of years of research by scientists way smarter than any of us?

Your experiences are completely and totally valid, yet the conclusions you draw from them are not. Having field experience does NOT give you carte blanche to make sweeping generalizations and false statements based on your misunderstanding of your evidence, without being questioned about it! Arguments based on fundamentals, scientific facts and logic will always trump anecdotal evidence such as yours. This concept is the cornerstone of the phorum:
http://phoenixphorum.com/welcome-to-pho ... vt169.html

If we let people with field experience say whatever the hell they want to, without question, then we would be like every other chest beating egomaniac car audio forum out there, where every argument delves into ad hominem attacks and "who has been in the industry longer". Nobody learns anything from that... it's all completely irrelevant ego
"cred posturing" and has nothing to do with car audio at all.

I commend you on finally finding some evidence to back yourself up this time, however the article you linked only further supports our point that clipping is the root cause of speaker failure in underpowered setups. The reason they mention that a lower power amp will be more likely to clip than a higher powered one is simply because the end user will be more likely to expect too much power from the smaller amp, thus forcing clipping to occur.

And we are all agreeing with that point as well. If you have a smaller amp, the end user is more likely to want more output and will force the amp to clip in order to get the volume they want. This, however, is not the argument. What we have all been arguing about is the fundamental reason why a speaker blows when underpowered... and that is CLIPPING, due to pushing the limits on the small amp, not simply due to the act of underpowering itself (which is what you have been saying). If an underpowered amp was configured to never clip, you would not blow speakers with it.

I want you to come up with a non-anecdotal reason why the DMM method is fundamentally flawed before I bother arguing that one with you anymore. Experts use their oscilloscopes (because, as experts, they have the right tools), or their ears (because they have the experience to know what to listen for). Or do you mean to tell me that you really think Joe Average can hear clipping on a 1500 watt ported subwoofer in a rattly piece of shit car while driving down the road? They can't. You would be lucky to hear 10% THD on a subwoofer in a test lab.

I can think of quite a bit of anecdotal evidence that supports the DMM method simply from my experiences on this forum. Lots of newbies who tuned their subs "by ear" with cranked bass boost and gains, who thought it sounded JUST GREAT, but that gosh darn protect kept jumping in. Lo and behold after they hook up their DMM they are 12dB over on their gains, and are totally pissed off at how quiet their underpowered setup sounds now. But the amp no longer goes into protection!

[holmis]

but the reason for the clipping is:
dumb user + underrated equipment= blown gear


thats a fact...

//

[ttocs]

you make it sound as though I have been saying that 4 watts will blow your speakers. No, I understand that, but fundimentally what causes the signal to clip? The fact that it is too small and that the user has turned it up too high..... now i guess you can take the "guns don't kill people" stand and say that it is not the amp but the tool that turned it up too high but if that is the case then I would have to ask why you like to argue? All I am trying to get across to people/newbs is that if you do not properly power your speaker, you can still ruin it where the way you guys make it sound is as though there is no way it can ever happen. it can, are we in agreement>?

[stipud]

you make it sound as though I have been saying that 4 watts will blow your speakers. No, I understand that, but fundimentally what causes the signal to clip? The fact that it is too small and that the user has turned it up too high..... now i guess you can take the "guns don't kill people" stand and say that it is not the amp but the tool that turned it up too high but if that is the case then I would have to ask why you like to argue? All I am trying to get across to people/newbs is that if you do not properly power your speaker, you can still ruin it where the way you guys make it sound is as though there is no way it can ever happen. it can, are we in agreement>?

That is exactly what was said in the BCAE article, and exactly what Jason was talking about. You disagreed with both of them and started this whole argument, yet you now believe the exact same thing that we have been arguing from the start? Why did you start the argument then?

We never said there is no way an underpowered amp could blow a speaker, we said it shouldn't happen WITHOUT CLIPPING (how on earth you could miss that point is beyond me). Clipping is the cause of failure, not underpowering, and that was the fundamental difference between our points.

[ttocs]

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?

[stipud]

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're not misreading it, but misunderstanding it! Kind of ironic, because you DID take that quote out of context. Do you know what context means? If you completely ignored every word Jason, me and the BCAE article said about clipping being the root cause NOT underpowering alone, then I have no goddamn idea what else to say . Brian's quote makes perfect sense in the context of the arguments we were putting forth about CLIPPING.

[ttocs]

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.