Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler sayings-myths-falsities-truths in audio/video

Oh, that's good to know. I've been concerned about playing badly compressed MP3s on my Axioms. I usually downrate those MP3s and re-rip them if possible, but they still sneak in there.

it's not clipping that damages speakers, but Power.
if you increase the volume to the point where there is heavy clipping, then the amp is in effect putting out more power than it was designed for, and it's this power - if sufficiently high - that will destroy speakers.
if a 50 Watt amp is clipping heavily and the total power going to a speaker is 100 watts and the speaker can take let's say, 125 Watts, then those speakers will be fine, whatever the form of the signal; even if it would be a triangle wave (resembling the teeth of a saw).
the speakers don't know the difference between a clean signal or a distorted one; they only thing they know is "power", and too much of it will heat up and break the speaker.

i would not qualify what you refer to as being "wisdom", but a myth invented by people who imagine an answer for a given unknown or problem, and then "make" it a truth.

it's a bit like the difference between religion and science.

There is no reason to be afraid of playing badly compressed music files; the sound system you have does not know the difference between good and bad compression or whatever kind of distortion it can encounter.

A sound system only reproduces what it is given to reproduce, whether good or bad.

You may understand what you're trying to say, but you're not explaining it well.

Power is the right word, but is not interchangeable with Watts. Power is Watts over time. An amp driven into clipping is not going to be putting out much more in terms of Wattage as it's maximum during clean amplification. But the power output will be considerably higher, due in fact to the shape of the output waveform. Alternating current (AC) spends very little time at peak Wattage, and thus has a low total power. DC (direct current) is constant, and thus will quickly present the voice coil with an excessive amount of power to dissipate as heat. So triangle waves just touch peak wattage for the shortest possible time, but if they are clipped at peak wattage, the time spent there is longer, and thus higher power output.

Most amps are not DC coupled, and so will not reproduce a DC signal fed to their input. Some amp designers think that DC reproduction is a good thing and go to efforts to make the amp be able to do so. I don't see that is a plus at all. A speaker should never see DC.

Audio with dynamic range compression (not psychoacoustic lossy compression) do have a higher total audio power (that's why they sound louder). But still are AC signals. They will have the speaker dissipating more heat, but you hearing will go before the voice coil. So trust your ears when playing music with large amounts of compression applied. If it sounds too loud, turn it down.