I thought this article was interesting:
Loudspeakers & Power Ratings Part III: The Test Results 
Upon inspection of the deceased, it became apparent why it took so much power to burn this speaker. The VC wire was wound on an Aluminum bobbin, which in turn was directly coupled to an aluminum cone. This combination of parts allowed much heat to be drawn away from the VC, keeping it cooler than almost all other 1” VC's of this height and size would be. Kudos to the designers at Axiom for an excellent design job.
He was a fine woofer...
I'm too tired to read it right now. I had to think a lot for this series of articles.
I find it a bit too graphic for me! A perfectly good Axiom speaker, ruined.
Interesting though, yes.
Ruined?
MURDERED is more like it!
The Horror.... The Horror!
::: Runs away crying :::
It is an interesting article - but it seems a very strange experiment for Axiom to sponsor through donation (sacrifice) of a couple of perfectly innocent woofers.
Although I like breaking stuff as much as the next guy, I guess I'm not sophisticated enough to understand what the results of the test are telling me.... (even after re-reading the conclusion section)
The results are telling you that you're never going to blow your Axioms.
Yeah, I think Peter has the right of it. You can put a ton of power into those things, and as long as they're still in the box, and you're not playing pink noise, they should survive.
So, if I keep having woofers pop out during play I should consider turning it down a little?
Yes, if they pop out like cartoon eyes, trim that volume back a smidge.
Yes, if they pop out like cartoon eyes, trim that volume back a smidge.
If I had more money I would pop in earplugs and turn up the volume right now.
Bet you couldn't do anything to 'em.
I cranked them briefly once. Too loud. Very clean!
I think that's the idea behind the 1400-8. The article mentioned using 1100 watt peaks to make their eyes bulge.
Tom wanted to make a cool new amp and Ian wanted to give his customers a chance to fry woofers instead of just tweeters; if you buy woofers and tweeters in equal quantity but your customers can only fry tweeters, pretty soon you're going to have a heap of woofers out in back you have to dust every week.
The above is a late night hypothesis and should not be confused with a statement of fact.
I love the image of woofers in big piles behind the factory.
When I was a kid we used to raid the dumpsters behind the Philips warehouse/office a few miles away. There was a big service depot there and they always tossed out the coolest stuff. The official target was big Philips/DeForest woofers with fried voice coils that could be re-wound and built into speakers -- we could afford the tweeters and midranges but the big woofers were always too many $$ for a kid on a paper route.
They didn't have big piles of woofers but "the dumpster behind a national audio/video service depot" makes a pretty good image too. Televisions, shortwave radios, test equipment, you name it and they tossed it. If you want an amusing image, remember that the depot was a few miles away so we had to bring all this stuff home on bicycles...
Now it's kids in Dwight On. that go to the dumpsters to get subwoofer parts and bits of high-gloss realwood panels...
... on ATVs and snowmobiles...
John? How did you fit televisions on bicycles? (I think I read your post before the edit...)