Originally Posted By: J. Bellemare
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).

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.


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