Sure, give me a 1200W sub and I will burn the chit out of it with a 200W RMS even a 50W RMS amp, I bet I can destroy the sub in less then 15 min.

So everyone understands, edzy is correct about under-powering a speaker will not do any damage to the speaker at all, it is not what I have said, it is over-driving the amp into clipping that damages the speaker, however edzy is wrong that over-driving an underpowered amp "sends" too much power to the speaker and that is what does the damage, it is not, what damages the speaker is DC current, output from an amp is A/C current until it is over-driven into clipping, when the amp clips, [or square waves] the output is DC current and that is what burns the VC, it is pretty much the same as how your car lighter works, pass DC current through a coil of wire with resistance in it and it will get hot.

This subject will be debated endlessly.

Take it from someone with over 30 years of car audio experience, and ignore why as that is somewhat irrelevant, underpowered systems damage more speakers by far, then systems that are properly powered or even over-powered, nuff said. 94

 

People just are just told and taught differently in car audio. If you want a full proof setup go to a shop that will back their work. If you want to do it yourself do a lot of research. Hell if you want to buy the sub and record you blowing them be my guest. I have them on aq2200d.

 

Clipping is not DC, though. If that waveform crosses the zero point and goes negative, no matter what shape the waveform is, it's NOT DC, it's alternating current.

Even then, pulsed DC does not mean instant death, it just means the driver only moves one direction. IF it's flat out filtered DC... well... that can be bad as long as the power input is more than that of which the motor structure can wick away from the coil at a standstill. Remember that the amp will produce DC after it blows up and dumps one full rail into the VC, until then it's not DC, unless it's at least half-wave rectified.

This is DC


This is not DC


We both agree to a point.

Let's all agree that lack of power results in user error from excessive gain boosting, bass boosting, and other compensatory actions. User error being the key words here.

 

Told you it was a waste of your time the kid thinks he is teaching you something.

 

Technically the signal is still AC. But a 1HZ square wave looks a lot like DC in fact you could drive a DC motor with a 1HZ square wave. If you split a square wave in half then the current flows in one direction which is DC for half a second. This is what is ment when someone says you send DC to a speaker coil. Which I know you already knew this but just pointing it to those who can't seem to figure it out. A speakers power rating isn't a sitting still rating they assume the voice coil will be moving enough to cool it down. Once you start clipping an amp that is no longer true. Light clipping is perfectly fine and occurs more then most people think. But heavily clipping a sub amp will burn up a speaker quickly.

The point is we are arguing over semantics which is a waste of time cause if you tell someone they can't blow a speaker by under powering it, they will get pissed when their $100 1500w amplifier blows their 2000w subwoofer.

Which you can sit back and laugh at the person as being uneducated but they don't know, nor have any desire to understand the technical details. They are just pissed cause they listend to some dude on the internet tell them they could do that. That's where "experience" comes into play. When you run or work for a buisness you have to be careful what you tell someone. The audio industry has its own language and what was said by fcm is the general accepted practice.

 

General accepted practice? Eh, not really. The majority of setups out there are under powered. Go to diyma and look at any sq install. 90% of those setups are under powered. The problem is user error, not the amp. For example, right at this moment there is a sundown 50.4 running the front stage(active) in my gf's car. The front stage is the massive audio rk6 component set. The mid itself is rated at 225w.....and the setup is completely fine.

 

So you want a cookie for your setup? When I was into car audio I can a Class A 25w amp to a 200 watt setup. whoopty fricken do! Some of us have been doing car audio probably longer then you have been a live.

Stop being a douche and trying to get someone to say something they aren't saying. Just makes you look like a jackass. Its common knowledge that when someone says what FCM did he is referring to people who buy undersized amps and drives them into clipping because they believe they are safe cause the amp says 1000w and the sub says 2000w. Thinking they can never blow the sub because the amp is rated less then the rated subwoofer rating. Or buy crappy 1000w amps that couldn't put out anywhere near 1000w and end up just clipping badly.

 

Crappy amp=crappy results. That's a given.

Sending a small signal to a driver that can handle a large signal will not result in speaker failure.

You 2 are tryin' to pass off user error as fact.

 

Edzy, I agreed with you on many post. But this one you a lil wrong on. You can see it on high end passive x-overs as they have a small bulb in them to save the speaker from dc current. I not going to jump in and write the samething over. Good points have been made and posted.