Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stereo equipment poll


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Posted by Rick Denney on April 13, 2001 at 16:05:59:

In Reply to: Re: Re: Re: Re: Stereo equipment poll posted by Chuck(G) on April 13, 2001 at 15:44:29:

Yup, it's the tweeters what get fried when the amp is over-driven.

The first speaker manufacturer I noticed that described the problem was Advent, and they included an article with their speakers warning against overdriving them with too small an amplifier. Of course, Advents are acoustic suspension speakers that are really hard to overdrive with raw power. That is, until the foam surround breaks down, which happens in about 15 years. I used to drive my 24-year-old Advents with a Flame--er--Phase Linear 400, which was 250 watts per channel linear amp that weight about 30 pounds. And the Spectro-Acoustics amp that followed was 200 watts per channel, and drive those Linn speakers when they were new at pretty high listening levels without problems. But when I play orchestral recordings to accompany my excerpt fanstasies, the 75-watt Carver is barely enough.

Even my small, ported Linn loudspeakers have specs from the factory that say they can be driven by any amplifier on the high-power side, as long as they don't audibly bottom out (which is easy to hear in the woofer but not in the tweeter), but that a low-power amp should not be over-driven. Both those speakers have soft-dome tweeters, and speakers with electrostatic or ribbon high-frequency drivers might be less sensitive. I rather like the smoother sound of soft-dome tweeters and all my speakers seem to have them at whatever price range.

Rick "who uses plain lamp-cord as speaker wire because it's white and cheap" Denney


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