Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Clipping

Clipping in a very simplistic way is like running DC power thru your speaker (for short periods of time). And since speakers (esp tweaters) can't cool down effectively when presented with a DC signal the voicecoil melts.

Bren,

Interesting discussion. Spent quite some time today doing Fourier analysis. I've forgotten so much since college

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So if I were to rebuild his Figures with the amplitudes reversed, I could prove that woofers would blow before tweeters...
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That's correct. And the 'heat' answer is on the right track, I think. Just the shear mass of woofers, much stronger mechanically and thermally.

As for the Ian's quote... - see my comment above

Clipping in a very simplistic way is like running DC power thru your speaker (for short periods of time). And since speakers (esp tweaters) can't cool down effectively when presented with a DC signal the voicecoil melts.

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Very popular explanation but it's wrong.

First, DC power doesn't hurt tweeters (unless you intentionly disable the crossover circuits).

Second, you can run DC power thru a speaker.

Third, there is no DC componet that results from clipping. It's at worst a square wave. If you severely clip a 1 kHz sinusoid at 10V, it will be alternating +/- 10 V, no DC component.

Here is the original post from Ian. Notice the date. Axiom wasn't about to release amps back in 2002. You're insinuating a bias that I don't think exists.

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Interesting discussion. Spent quite some time today doing Fourier analysis. I've forgotten so much since college

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Wandering mathematician?

Bren R.

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You're insinuating a bias that I don't think exists.

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Whoops, I missed that part of his post.

Nah, I don't think there is any bias based on the offered products, if so, the Axiom corporate line would be that their interconnects and speaker cable made listening orgasmic.

Bren R.

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That link you sent, BrenR, is most like what I hear only louder.

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Whoops... got mixed up in the rest of this and forgot about you. Much love, man. That's 9dB of gain added in order to clip to that level, by the way.

Bren R.

You're insinuating a bias that I don't think exists.

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C'mon! How many more smilies do I need to put so it's clear that it was a joke. I have a great respect for Ian.

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Third, there is no DC componet that results from clipping. It's at worst a square wave

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I know, I was really generalizing... I was saying a square wave is a lot closer to DC then a true signal is (which would be closer to AC). And if a speaker is rated for say 200watts... I can't believe it could handle 200watts of DC as well as if it was a nice sine wave. There has to be some cool down period while the AC-like signal changes direction. The power presented to the coil is not constant in that senerio.

There has to be some cool down period while the AC-like signal changes direction
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True. However, it's not a big deal, at most it's a factor of 2 between a pure square wave and a pure sinusoid. Given that's never a square wave it's even less. Not a big deal.