psaudio.com A clipped power amplifier output can damage a tweeter. What are the limitations of amps? Can they be used all the way to the maximum output or should one stay reserved?
In 40 years of stereo ownership and involvement in the hobby. The one time I clipped an amp and damaged a tweeter was with a 30 watt per channel receiver And toasted the tweeter.
Sounds about right ;) I have never blown a tweeter on a powerful amp. Only amps that have too little power. Clips like crazy when they run out of juice :P
I think the part that confuses people, is the question of how can you exceed the power of an amp? Isnt full volume on a 50watt amp just 50watts? The answer mostly lies in both the input sensitivity of the amplifier, and the output signal level from the source device. To cut a long story short and simplify the explanation, the calibration of the volume or gain control relative to the amplifiers output is based on a certain input voltage going into the amplifier. In real life, this can vary enourmously between different sources, different recordings, different equipment inline before the amp, etc etc. So it’s totally common to end up with an input signal to the amplifier with a voltage or level high enough that the amplifier may reach the rated output at only half volume as indicated by the volume control. This is how we usually end up clipping power amps
Yes, and also signal peaks can clip the amp without the whole thing turning obviously distorted. But as to your first paragraph, actually a fully clipped 50 watt amp can produce up to 100 watts RMS, or even more if under-rated. Meanwhile tweeters and even midranges usually can't handle the full rated power of the speaker -- the tweeter normally may see only a few % of the total. It is possible to blow drivers without clipping the amp too, I damaged a mid with high pitched vocals.
That answered my long standing question. I cannot afford big amplifiers like the audiophile community craves. My integrated amplifier is rated at 30 watts per channel and I have had no audible problems with "distortion" that I could hear.
I would like to see some real explanation. Some say it is the harmonics that will damage the tweeter. But the 15th harmonic of a 100Hz signal clipped is 1/15 the power. That would be 2 watts on a 30 watt amp. Not enough to burn a tweeter. What about DC? Well mids and tweeters have Capacitors in series. So please help me understand this with some math.... show me a typical audio spectrum with peak to average ratios and how clipping will change the output spectrum to the point that the HF content is high enough to damage tweeters!
I'd like to know how amplifier manufacturers align their volume knobs/controls in relation to the max power of the amplifier. Is there any standard for the engineers, or does one manufacturer reach full power at 50% knob rotation while another does it at 95%? I know it's not that simple, since speaker impedance varies as well as input voltage from the source, but there must be some kind of finger in the wind standard.
@Fat Rat it really doesn't. Fuel quality, load and wind all affect the speed of my car, but none of them have any relation to how the throttle was engineered. I'm asking how the volume control is set in amplifiers.
How come they don't make speakers with a watt meter so you know how many watts are being used I know that they put them in some amps and how do you read the meters if you mono block them and or your speakers are 4 ohm thanks. Mr. Simpleton
I am new to the hifi world. Hadn't even thought that could exist! I find there is learning even from going through comments section. Thanks for sharing. :-)
At the last Rocky Mountain Audio Fest I had Roger Sanders telling me that my 25 watt, Class A, Mark Levinson amps were clipping all of the time in my Sound Lab electrostatic speakers. He was telling me I needed his 500 watt into 8 ohm amps to drive my speakers properly. If my amps are always clipping then give me more! They sound fantastic! We greatly overestimate the amount of power we are using. If you have a pretty much standard 85db/w/m speaker, it uses 1 watt of power at 85db, most of you would not think that to be loud enough. An extra 10 db takes 10 times the power, so 95db requires 10 watts. I find 95db to be loud. If you want 105db, it takes 100 watts. I find 105db to be unpleasant. If you want concert level, ear damaging 115db, you need 1,000 watts. Since basically none of us have 1,000 watt amplifiers, this is serious into clipping. If you want to play this loud, you need big Klipsch speakers.
You grossly oversimplify. You forget the distance from the speakers. What you are saying applies to 1m from the speaker. With 2 speakers you get max 6db more, depending on the signal, at a distance 1m from both. In a real room you get even louder because of room reflections. The issue is though that spl drops off by 3db with double the distance. So -3db at 2m, -6db at 4m etc. More importantly you forget that this theoretical sensitivity is at 8ohms. Often depending on speaker and frequency the speaker impedance can drop to less than 4ohms. At 4ohms you will need double the power from the amp. Your electrostatics most probably exhibit an impedance much lower than nominal in higher frequencies. Equally important is the phase angle of the speaker response which can also tax an amplifier close to its power limit.
@@razisnThis is true, but as you said, we listen in rooms. I can't quantify this, but my speakers do not get half as loud if I move 4 meters away. Outside, the spl drop off is absolutely true.
remember that speaker efficiency normally is measured at some frequencies. There are many speakers that have very low impedance in the bass register. And will need many times more watts to really do well.
@@ThinkingBetter i came across videos especially those LF subwoofer test they always come with warnings will they really damage the speakers at normal volume?
Han Siang Ng Yes, your right. If you use a too powerful amplifier connected to a small bookshelf speaker and play a lower frequency than the speaker can output then it might damage the speaker without you noticing it cause the voice coil moves too much and can burn with no audible effect.
@@ThinkingBetter Usually you will be way above normal listening levels before too much power to a speaker happens. Unless you have a bookshelf speaker with a very low power handling capability.
@@oysteinsoreide4323 The point is that you have different ways to burn your speakers and too much of too low frequencies is among them. Clipping creates higher frequency harmonics that can burn your tweeters. Too low frequencies that are below your speakers' effective frequency response can burn your speakers silently even the music itself plays well. I've damaged several speakers by having the woofer voice coil hitting the bottom with a too low frequency for what the speaker can play. One case happened due to having a speaker on the same table as my record player causing sudden very low frequency acoustic feedback (vibrations from speaker to turntable). The issue with too low frequencies is that you might not actually hear them. A 20Hz sine wave continuously at peak level is not audible in most speakers except the possible distortion it creates from un-linear motion, increased bass port airflow and worse, the sudden bang that occurs when the voice coil excursion peaks out perhaps even damaging it permanently.
You are not by definition under-powering your speaker, you are over-powering your amp. The amp then delivers clipped sine waves, which are extremely harmful to speakers. By feeding more input voltage into the amp than it has capability to turn into wattage, it is simply running out of steam. Picture trying to lift something extremely heavy from the ground and up over your head. You will damage something
With more power you reduce the risk of your amplifier getting to the point that it clips. Paul is right, go big or go home. It's not the normal music level that typically causes clipping, it's those transient spikes that create a huge demand for power and that's why you can drive a speaker rated at 250 watts with a 500 watt amp with no issues. I really don't pay attention to speaker power ratings.
I don't get it. Why do amp manufacturers allow to turn volume so loud that the amp starts clipping? Why not limit output volume so that it's even impossible to clip?
@@xanderguldie I understand that clipping happens only at the very end of the volume. So limit just last few mm of the volume knob. That won't affect watts too much, because amp cannot give more watts when it's clipping anyway. IMHO.
@Alessandro LinuxBSD "How can the manufacture know with speaker do you use?" Amp clipping has nothing to do with my speakers per se. I understand that I can blow out a tweeter if I put too many watts in, but the amp clipping happens in the amp, not in the loudspeakers.
Guntis Bukalders Tottaly wrong. Volume control only attenuates the gain of the preamp. You can clip an amp with the volume control set for example half way or less if the signal is too strong or you could turn the volume control up to full, which means zero attenuation of the preamp signal, without the amp clipping, or even sounding loud, if the signal is too low. You can test that by turning the volume all the way up without providing a signal from a source. No sound, no clipping... Btw of course speaker impedance plays a huge role. The lower the impedance of the speaker, the more power it draws and the more potential for clipping exists.
Amplifier clipping? Reduce the sound. Need it louder? Get more powerful amps. But you'll burn your speakers. Get both more powerful amps & speakers. Simple as that! Let's not make big deal out of simple stuff.
Thanks for nice and clear explanations. I have tried many TPA311* boards but all burned out without any heating, what would be the reason. I was using LiPO battery 11.1v and 16.8v with a 176 Ampere of stable current output, please help. The last one i have tried is TPA3118 and it plays for a second and the pop sound and total silence for another second, and this cycle continues
It’s been a long time since I’ve driven an amplifier to clipping. Back in the 70s and 80s yes, but amps today...great. I’ve used a 60 watt British amp on my Martin Logan Odyssey and it plays plenty loud without a hint of clip and that’s a tall order for a 60 watt amp. That said, if I take a 70s pioneer or similar SX receiver and try to drive a low impedance load like the Odyssey, I’m well aware that the amp protection relay may open, but modern amps are just good.
if you can hear the distortion from the speakers then the damage is already done. I recommend to buy as much power as you can afford. More power won’t damage your speakers, Not enough could.
@@jamesplotkin4674 The Rola 12UX50 twin cone speaker can be thrashed as hard as you give hard clipping without consequence of blown tweeters as there are no tweeters to worry about with this speaker
Marshall JCM 900 have a clipping diode in them. When Marshall did it they lost a lot of customers because they were upposed to be tube olny Clipping diod and op amo. SOme can use silicon transisters or germanium transistyers. RCM = Root Mean Square. A sine wave of 1000Hetz of unknown amplitused o dont knows!
Hi Paul, this seems like bad advice. You said dont worry about using your amplifier at its max volume essentially. This may be true in a simple pop audio track where compression is high. But for dynamic range type audio where the volume can vary by 20-30DB peaks (HOME THEATER!) running your amp near its max is going to cause heaps of clipping during explosions etc. Would be good if you clarified this... :)
The flat line that results from clipping is not what is full of high frequencies --- the line is DC, which is what really does the damage to speakers. The high frequencies that are generated come At The Corners where the curve ends and the flat line begins, and again where the line ends and the next curved portion begins. It is easier to think of the waveform as a line of mountains; clipping cuts off their tops and makes them level. For parking vehicles or landing helicopters, that would be nice, but in audio it's horrible. The simple way to know that you are pushing an amplifier (or a speaker) too far is that it begins to sound bad above a certain volume level. Just don't turn it up that far again, and everything should be OK.
Side note that when you push a Class AB amp into clipping you screw up the amp too and it can do some pretty awful things. Clipping can occur at all frequencies. The "speaker" is a complex motor/generator load that varies widely with frequency. Tube amps tend to clip gently for want of a better word.
Got nostalgic the other week and re-bought the first Receiver I ever bought. It was 1980 and I was 12 and worked all summer to have enough money to buy the Realistic STA 64 from a friend who had it for two years from new. Besides being nostalgic when I saw it I was curious to see what I was listening to back then. The only speakers I have to hook up to it are a set of Infinity RSa's. The receiver puts out 16 watts per channel. Just gonna have to be careful.
Clipping is bad, very bad. It's a silent speaker killer. Must stay as far away from clipping your amplifier as possible. Unfortunately nobody makes clip proof amplifiers. The user should be able to crank up their amplifiers as loud as they want with any speakers. And never be anywhere close to any kind of clipping. I personally don't even like soft clipping.
One way of damaging a twitter used to be people rewinding tapes at high speed monitoring the output. The tape sound would become supersonic and with the volume still it would on occasions depending on the speakers it would happen. I used to get a lot of blown tweeters on AR18 speakers. The makers were good and would give you as many tweeters you asked for as a dealer.
The great thing about my electrostatic speakers is that there is no tweeter to blow out. I was playing Bizet's Carmen from my Telarc LP yesterday and the big bass drum comes in and the amp clipped all over the place. Had to turn it down.
I never understood the praise heaped on the NAD 3020 amp for having a 'soft clipping' switch. If it's clipping, hard or soft, then 20W is just not powerful enough for your needs. Especially today, when people pay well over the odds on the used market for the horrid flimsy thing. Last week I picked up a 48W Luxman L-114A for around 2/3 of the going rate for a 3020. No contest.
I agree, I have my original Luxman R-114 that I purchased new in 1991 and I'm driving very efficient 1974 Altec speakers with 16" drivers. No need for more power!
Because NADs soft clipping would take the edge off of hard clipping. Plus that 20wpc receiver could put out almost 50 watts. Dynamic headroom. Most music uses 5-10 watts power . Peaks might me 10x more.
@@donalddeorio2237 All amplifiers of that vintage could peak at a much higher wattage than the RMS rating, sure, but the point remains that a 20W-rated amp has less dynamic headroom than most. At normal listening levels in a small-to-mid-sized room 20W RMS is plenty. A look at the comments on Steve Guttenberg's post today, though, shows that there are plenty of folks out there for whom plenty is never enough, and I wouldn't want to run a 3020 loud in a large space. :¬)
It's not just peak clipping to worry about. Similar types of distortion, resulting in strong high harmonics, can result from highly reactive speakers combined with output-stage current protection that isn't designed for large V-I phase shifts. And not just amplifiers can clip. I have a CD with severe clipping on several tracks. It's an African percussion CD, and the recording engineer failed in setting up his gain distribution. But because it's percussion, so the clipping only occurs in short bursts, it's hardly even audible, let alone a threat to tweeters. I only became aware of it, by monitoring the signal with a scope. I posted a few example scope screen shots here, so you can see what it looks like: cp.sync.com/dl/2b01b8a70/pjaxfp89-qybsbhxp-xy479fzr-7785qmdu
Speaking of clipping. CB radios have a transformer that takes audio signal and controls the power to the transmitter creating amplitude modulation in the radio frequency output. When the audio output exceeds the power feeding the transmitter, the negative swings can clip off the transmitter causing splash into nearby channels. I did come up with a circuit using a diode and a resistor to prevent the clipping by keeping just enough current to keep the transmitter from clipping off.
It happens all the time with the high power speakers of today . The important part is get an amplifier that performs above the rms rating of the speaker . Most blow speakers with under powered amps not over powering them . More power is safer , ask any car audio guy .
U should hear it. Sounds just like a clip/clack or quick distortion in spkrs. I’ve a cheap Chinese tube pwr amp (8-10 watts) Wen played alone wit iPad, phone, etc. no clipping. But wen paired wit Marantz, Concept, McIntosh components, volume past 50%, I’ll hear/get clipping. I simply turn volume down. (Burnt tweeter? Never happened) Wen I first heard it I thought spkrs not properly connected or receiver, or speakers need repair. No. Then I remembered my HS days, “clipping.” Went on uTube for solutions..
My understanding of why clipping destroys drivers is because you're asking them to reproduce a square wave; that is for the driver to be simultaneously pulling and pushing the air. It really also depends on the source material - I found that playing Appetite for Destruction by Guns n' Roses at over 70% volume through soft-dome tweeters powered by a 25 Watt per channel receiver from the late 1970s absolutely guaranteed destruction.
It's not the square waves that cause the issue....its the power in the harmonics that causes it. Like Paul said, clipping contains lots of high frequency content. Most tweeters can handle only a fraction of the power rating of the speakers themselves. A pair of speakers that can handle 100 watts or more might have tweeters that can only handle 10 watts. A 20 watt amp doesn't look like it should be able to damage the speakers, but full on clipping could result in 20 watts of high frequency content hitting the tweeters, causing them to fail. Over powered amps will usually take out the woofers long before the tweeters As long as the actual power output of a clipping amp does not exceed the power handling of any of the drivers....they won't blow.
More importantly . . . is the irreparable damage to one's ears -- especially in the high frequencies! But today, people don't want to think about consequences for their actions . . . they just want the HIGH of the experience . . . and forget about paying a permanent price for such FOOLISHNESS.
russmaleartist You are so right. In fact, my experience is that our hearing is also quite prone to add distortion at very loud levels and that’s a clear warning you should lower the level. I care much less about a burned tweeter than even slight damage to my hearing of let’s say 1% btw. Those of us who enjoy going to concerts and end up standing near some large speakers notice how the following day we can hear the buzzing in our ears. I had this experience with Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and other concerts.
Clipping can happen at low volumes. Some people want the sound of a low watt SET but you need an efficient speaker. If that was paired with something that needs power it would clip at a low volume. 75% of your amp power isn't always 75% of your volume knob.
Amplifiers can include a circuit for clipping protection by doing soft clipping, compression or gain reduction when the signal gets too loud. Tube amps usually do soft clipping without added circuits. Best is to always keep the volume down to a level where you don’t notice any distortion. I always go away from the speakers, perhaps open a door and a bit further away to carefully listen to judge if the sound is undistorted cause my own hearing will also distort when it’s very loud and I’m too close to the speakers. Especially if you have a party and planning to play loud, check this before guests are coming.
By the way, also beware that a too large amplifier can blow up a small speaker at sub bass frequencies you might not hear from the smaller speaker. For example, a small bookshelf speaker might be almost silent at 30Hz but if your music has a strong sound at 30Hz then smoke from the voice coil or a bang of the voice coil hitting bottom might be your first sign that you just damaged your speaker.
@@manFromPeterborough Actually it can be a terrible thing where you don't know how much your speaker got damaged. I've seen damage to the voice coil where repeated hits at the bottom caused it to start touching the inner gap making distortion and also damage to the center dust cap getting visibly deformed by the abrupt stop of motion. Recently one of my speakers got a crack in the surround from playing too loud, but one contributing factor was that the rubber material had started to harden making it more fragile. You gotta not love that.
@@ThinkingBetter I've mostly blown the tweeters with 30w amp, when I was teenager, I played the Goldair 20w amp through HMV 6" speakers with full bass and loudness switch on at moderate vol until the bottom out noise started happening and made a tape recording of it playing Mental as Anything - Big Wheel, I watch Garret Claridge blowing speakers and enjoy the Logitech hate video hearing the subwoofer going buzz buzz
vaughn tonkin I had some DIY large speakers using Coral 10 flat drivers and those were sounding like a hammer hits a piece of wood when the voice coils hit bottom.
@@jesusgavemeaids A multimeter cannot show you when an amplifier begins clipping, either soft or hard. You have to use an oscilloscope to view the actual waveform.
@@jesusgavemeaids.....using a multimeter is guess work. I researched it online and used a mathematical equation. Use UA-cam and search for "multimeter" and "clipping" or something to that effect. In addition to the videos, just trust your ears.
Not for tube amps. The wave gets comprssiions. JCMP 900 had clipping diodes in its. But the output transformer also get saturated. Electric motors, electric genrtor and transformers have to do with magnetic fileds. The incude th evoltages. Julies Futterman amps DID NOT have a output transformer. Its 2 fffern things!
In 40 years of stereo ownership and involvement in the hobby. The one time I clipped an amp and damaged a tweeter was with a 30 watt per channel receiver And toasted the tweeter.
No better thing than some fresh tweeter toast in the morning! 😁
Sounds about right ;)
I have never blown a tweeter on a powerful amp. Only amps that have too little power. Clips like crazy when they run out of juice :P
@Fat Rat I don't know how you make toast, but I just use the toaster 😜
@Fat Rat I prefer real butter with just a hint of cinnamon sugar.
@Fat Rat Both, of course! One's yummy and the other sounds sweet.
I think the part that confuses people, is the question of how can you exceed the power of an amp? Isnt full volume on a 50watt amp just 50watts?
The answer mostly lies in both the input sensitivity of the amplifier, and the output signal level from the source device.
To cut a long story short and simplify the explanation, the calibration of the volume or gain control relative to the amplifiers output is based on a certain input voltage going into the amplifier. In real life, this can vary enourmously between different sources, different recordings, different equipment inline before the amp, etc etc.
So it’s totally common to end up with an input signal to the amplifier with a voltage or level high enough that the amplifier may reach the rated output at only half volume as indicated by the volume control.
This is how we usually end up clipping power amps
Yes, and also signal peaks can clip the amp without the whole thing turning obviously distorted.
But as to your first paragraph, actually a fully clipped 50 watt amp can produce up to 100 watts RMS, or even more if under-rated. Meanwhile tweeters and even midranges usually can't handle the full rated power of the speaker -- the tweeter normally may see only a few % of the total. It is possible to blow drivers without clipping the amp too, I damaged a mid with high pitched vocals.
That answered my long standing question. I cannot afford big amplifiers like the audiophile community craves. My integrated amplifier is rated at 30 watts per channel and I have had no audible problems with "distortion" that I could hear.
I would like to see some real explanation. Some say it is the harmonics that will damage the tweeter. But the 15th harmonic of a 100Hz signal clipped is 1/15 the power. That would be 2 watts on a 30 watt amp. Not enough to burn a tweeter. What about DC? Well mids and tweeters have Capacitors in series. So please help me understand this with some math.... show me a typical audio spectrum with peak to average ratios and how clipping will change the output spectrum to the point that the HF content is high enough to damage tweeters!
An amp driven at its rated power is fine, but any given tweeter may fry itself below that if not power matched to that particular amp...
You blow woofers if you play with too much power and blow tweeter if you have too little power.
I'd like to know how amplifier manufacturers align their volume knobs/controls in relation to the max power of the amplifier. Is there any standard for the engineers, or does one manufacturer reach full power at 50% knob rotation while another does it at 95%? I know it's not that simple, since speaker impedance varies as well as input voltage from the source, but there must be some kind of finger in the wind standard.
@Fat Rat it really doesn't. Fuel quality, load and wind all affect the speed of my car, but none of them have any relation to how the throttle was engineered. I'm asking how the volume control is set in amplifiers.
@Fat Rat CD players put out 2v p-p, phono stage puts out 300mV RMS, the amp will clip on lower knob setting with CD player than the phono
How come they don't make speakers with a watt meter so you know how many watts are being used I know that they put them in some amps and how do you read the meters if you mono block them and or your speakers are 4 ohm thanks. Mr. Simpleton
I am new to the hifi world. Hadn't even thought that could exist! I find there is learning even from going through comments section. Thanks for sharing. :-)
At the last Rocky Mountain Audio Fest I had Roger Sanders telling me that my 25 watt, Class A, Mark Levinson amps were clipping all of the time in my Sound Lab electrostatic speakers. He was telling me I needed his 500 watt into 8 ohm amps to drive my speakers properly. If my amps are always clipping then give me more! They sound fantastic! We greatly overestimate the amount of power we are using. If you have a pretty much standard 85db/w/m speaker, it uses 1 watt of power at 85db, most of you would not think that to be loud enough. An extra 10 db takes 10 times the power, so 95db requires 10 watts. I find 95db to be loud. If you want 105db, it takes 100 watts. I find 105db to be unpleasant. If you want concert level, ear damaging 115db, you need 1,000 watts. Since basically none of us have 1,000 watt amplifiers, this is serious into clipping. If you want to play this loud, you need big Klipsch speakers.
You grossly oversimplify. You forget the distance from the speakers. What you are saying applies to 1m from the speaker. With 2 speakers you get max 6db more, depending on the signal, at a distance 1m from both. In a real room you get even louder because of room reflections. The issue is though that spl drops off by 3db with double the distance. So -3db at 2m, -6db at 4m etc. More importantly you forget that this theoretical sensitivity is at 8ohms. Often depending on speaker and frequency the speaker impedance can drop to less than 4ohms. At 4ohms you will need double the power from the amp. Your electrostatics most probably exhibit an impedance much lower than nominal in higher frequencies. Equally important is the phase angle of the speaker response which can also tax an amplifier close to its power limit.
@@razisnThis is true, but as you said, we listen in rooms. I can't quantify this, but my speakers do not get half as loud if I move 4 meters away. Outside, the spl drop off is absolutely true.
John LeBeau to get subjectively half as loud you need a dB drop of approx -10.
remember that speaker efficiency normally is measured at some frequencies. There are many speakers that have very low impedance in the bass register. And will need many times more watts to really do well.
85db = 1w
88db = 2w
91db = 4w
94db = 8w
97db = 16w
100db = 32w
103db = 64w
106db = 128w
109db = 256w
112db = 512w
115db = 1024w
ROCK ON
Can we get clipping when playing back certain frequency?
Han Siang Ng Clipping can happen at any frequency when the level is beyond what the amplifier can output.
@@ThinkingBetter i came across videos especially those LF subwoofer test they always come with warnings will they really damage the speakers at normal volume?
Han Siang Ng Yes, your right. If you use a too powerful amplifier connected to a small bookshelf speaker and play a lower frequency than the speaker can output then it might damage the speaker without you noticing it cause the voice coil moves too much and can burn with no audible effect.
@@ThinkingBetter Usually you will be way above normal listening levels before too much power to a speaker happens. Unless you have a bookshelf speaker with a very low power handling capability.
@@oysteinsoreide4323 The point is that you have different ways to burn your speakers and too much of too low frequencies is among them. Clipping creates higher frequency harmonics that can burn your tweeters. Too low frequencies that are below your speakers' effective frequency response can burn your speakers silently even the music itself plays well. I've damaged several speakers by having the woofer voice coil hitting the bottom with a too low frequency for what the speaker can play. One case happened due to having a speaker on the same table as my record player causing sudden very low frequency acoustic feedback (vibrations from speaker to turntable). The issue with too low frequencies is that you might not actually hear them. A 20Hz sine wave continuously at peak level is not audible in most speakers except the possible distortion it creates from un-linear motion, increased bass port airflow and worse, the sudden bang that occurs when the voice coil excursion peaks out perhaps even damaging it permanently.
I have been told that you can damage a speaker by under powering it. Sounds wrong to me. What's the truth?
You are not by definition under-powering your speaker, you are over-powering your amp. The amp then delivers clipped sine waves, which are extremely harmful to speakers. By feeding more input voltage into the amp than it has capability to turn into wattage, it is simply running out of steam. Picture trying to lift something extremely heavy from the ground and up over your head. You will damage something
With more power you reduce the risk of your amplifier getting to the point that it clips. Paul is right, go big or go home. It's not the normal music level that typically causes clipping, it's those transient spikes that create a huge demand for power and that's why you can drive a speaker rated at 250 watts with a 500 watt amp with no issues. I really don't pay attention to speaker power ratings.
I don't get it. Why do amp manufacturers allow to turn volume so loud that the amp starts clipping? Why not limit output volume so that it's even impossible to clip?
Because the more watts they can claim the better
@@xanderguldie I understand that clipping happens only at the very end of the volume. So limit just last few mm of the volume knob. That won't affect watts too much, because amp cannot give more watts when it's clipping anyway. IMHO.
@Alessandro LinuxBSD "How can the manufacture know with speaker do you use?" Amp clipping has nothing to do with my speakers per se. I understand that I can blow out a tweeter if I put too many watts in, but the amp clipping happens in the amp, not in the loudspeakers.
Guntis Bukalders Tottaly wrong. Volume control only attenuates the gain of the preamp. You can clip an amp with the volume control set for example half way or less if the signal is too strong or you could turn the volume control up to full, which means zero attenuation of the preamp signal, without the amp clipping, or even sounding loud, if the signal is too low. You can test that by turning the volume all the way up without providing a signal from a source. No sound, no clipping... Btw of course speaker impedance plays a huge role. The lower the impedance of the speaker, the more power it draws and the more potential for clipping exists.
Alessandro LinuxBSD Thank you!
Amplifier clipping? Reduce the sound. Need it louder? Get more powerful amps. But you'll burn your speakers. Get both more powerful amps & speakers. Simple as that! Let's not make big deal out of simple stuff.
I disagree but whatever!
Thanks for nice and clear explanations.
I have tried many TPA311* boards but all burned out without any heating, what would be the reason. I was using LiPO battery 11.1v and 16.8v with a 176 Ampere of stable current output, please help.
The last one i have tried is TPA3118 and it plays for a second and the pop sound and total silence for another second, and this cycle continues
Paul did an excellent job bringing this complex issue into an understandable level. Super job Paul.
Another ironic video (complete with INPUT clipping)!
Paul, give yourself more 'headroom'!
It’s been a long time since I’ve driven an amplifier to clipping. Back in the 70s and 80s yes, but amps today...great. I’ve used a 60 watt British amp on my Martin Logan Odyssey and it plays plenty loud without a hint of clip and that’s a tall order for a 60 watt amp. That said, if I take a 70s pioneer or similar SX receiver and try to drive a low impedance load like the Odyssey, I’m well aware that the amp protection relay may open, but modern amps are just good.
if you can hear the distortion from the speakers then the damage is already done. I recommend to buy as much power as you can afford. More power won’t damage your speakers, Not enough could.
And if you want louder, add more speakers. A pair of Infinity V's will do nicely.
@@jamesplotkin4674 The Rola 12UX50 twin cone speaker can be thrashed as hard as you give hard clipping without consequence of blown tweeters as there are no tweeters to worry about with this speaker
Marshall JCM 900 have a clipping diode in them. When Marshall did it they lost a lot of customers because they were upposed to be tube olny Clipping diod and op amo. SOme can use silicon transisters or germanium transistyers. RCM = Root Mean Square. A sine wave of 1000Hetz of unknown amplitused o dont knows!
Hi Paul, this seems like bad advice. You said dont worry about using your amplifier at its max volume essentially. This may be true in a simple pop audio track where compression is high. But for dynamic range type audio where the volume can vary by 20-30DB peaks (HOME THEATER!) running your amp near its max is going to cause heaps of clipping during explosions etc.
Would be good if you clarified this... :)
The flat line that results from clipping is not what is full of high frequencies ---
the line is DC, which is what really does the damage to speakers.
The high frequencies that are generated come At The Corners where the curve ends and the flat line begins,
and again where the line ends and the next curved portion begins.
It is easier to think of the waveform as a line of mountains; clipping cuts off their tops and makes them level.
For parking vehicles or landing helicopters, that would be nice, but in audio it's horrible.
The simple way to know that you are pushing an amplifier (or a speaker) too far
is that it begins to sound bad above a certain volume level.
Just don't turn it up that far again, and everything should be OK.
Side note that when you push a Class AB amp into clipping you screw up the amp too and it can do some pretty awful things. Clipping can occur at all frequencies. The "speaker" is a complex motor/generator load that varies widely with frequency. Tube amps tend to clip gently for want of a better word.
Great video to watch at bedtime. I was fast asleep some 50 seconds into it. Zzzzzz.....
Got nostalgic the other week and re-bought the first Receiver I ever bought. It was 1980 and I was 12 and worked all summer to have enough money to buy the Realistic STA 64 from a friend who had it for two years from new. Besides being nostalgic when I saw it I was curious to see what I was listening to back then. The only speakers I have to hook up to it are a set of Infinity RSa's. The receiver puts out 16 watts per channel. Just gonna have to be careful.
My STA-130 also blew a lot of tweeters
Clipping is bad, very bad. It's a silent speaker killer. Must stay as far away from clipping your amplifier as possible. Unfortunately nobody makes clip proof amplifiers. The user should be able to crank up their amplifiers as loud as they want with any speakers. And never be anywhere close to any kind of clipping. I personally don't even like soft clipping.
As I understand it, you simply cannot have clipping with a Class D amplifier. I'm willing to stand corrected though.
One way of damaging a twitter used to be people rewinding tapes at high speed monitoring the output. The tape sound would become supersonic and with the volume still it would on occasions depending on the speakers it would happen. I used to get a lot of blown tweeters on AR18 speakers.
The makers were good and would give you as many tweeters you asked for as a dealer.
I've used a good bit of the 5 year speaker warranty with tweeter replacements from Tandy
The great thing about my electrostatic speakers is that there is no tweeter to blow out. I was playing Bizet's Carmen from my Telarc LP yesterday and the big bass drum comes in and the amp clipped all over the place. Had to turn it down.
I never understood the praise heaped on the NAD 3020 amp for having a 'soft clipping' switch. If it's clipping, hard or soft, then 20W is just not powerful enough for your needs. Especially today, when people pay well over the odds on the used market for the horrid flimsy thing. Last week I picked up a 48W Luxman L-114A for around 2/3 of the going rate for a 3020. No contest.
I agree, I have my original Luxman R-114 that I purchased new in 1991 and I'm driving very efficient 1974 Altec speakers with 16" drivers. No need for more power!
Because NADs soft clipping would take the edge off of hard clipping. Plus that 20wpc receiver could put out almost 50 watts. Dynamic headroom. Most music uses 5-10 watts power . Peaks might me 10x more.
I had a speaker rated at 125wpc and presented it with 350wpc bi amping and they sounded amazing
@@donalddeorio2237 All amplifiers of that vintage could peak at a much higher wattage than the RMS rating, sure, but the point remains that a 20W-rated amp has less dynamic headroom than most. At normal listening levels in a small-to-mid-sized room 20W RMS is plenty. A look at the comments on Steve Guttenberg's post today, though, shows that there are plenty of folks out there for whom plenty is never enough, and I wouldn't want to run a 3020 loud in a large space. :¬)
The problem is class d
It's not just peak clipping to worry about. Similar types of distortion, resulting in strong high harmonics, can result from highly reactive speakers combined with output-stage current protection that isn't designed for large V-I phase shifts.
And not just amplifiers can clip. I have a CD with severe clipping on several tracks. It's an African percussion CD, and the recording engineer failed in setting up his gain distribution. But because it's percussion, so the clipping only occurs in short bursts, it's hardly even audible, let alone a threat to tweeters. I only became aware of it, by monitoring the signal with a scope. I posted a few example scope screen shots here, so you can see what it looks like: cp.sync.com/dl/2b01b8a70/pjaxfp89-qybsbhxp-xy479fzr-7785qmdu
Oh , I didn't know your microwaves come in a black as well . Cool !
Speaking of clipping. CB radios have a transformer that takes audio signal and controls the power to the transmitter creating amplitude modulation in the radio frequency output. When the audio output exceeds the power feeding the transmitter, the negative swings can clip off the transmitter causing splash into nearby channels. I did come up with a circuit using a diode and a resistor to prevent the clipping by keeping just enough current to keep the transmitter from clipping off.
It happens all the time with the high power speakers of today .
The important part is get an amplifier that performs above the rms rating of the speaker .
Most blow speakers with under powered amps not over powering them .
More power is safer , ask any car audio guy .
The clipped signal does not contain high frequency material, it is a zero hertz dc signal and the duration of the dc signal can overheat a speaker.
But how do you know audibly if it clips?
U should hear it. Sounds just like a clip/clack or quick distortion in spkrs. I’ve a cheap Chinese tube pwr amp (8-10 watts) Wen played alone wit iPad, phone, etc. no clipping. But wen paired wit Marantz, Concept, McIntosh components, volume past 50%, I’ll hear/get clipping. I simply turn volume down. (Burnt tweeter? Never happened) Wen I first heard it I thought spkrs not properly connected or receiver, or speakers need repair. No. Then I remembered my HS days, “clipping.” Went on uTube for solutions..
My understanding of why clipping destroys drivers is because you're asking them to reproduce a square wave; that is for the driver to be simultaneously pulling and pushing the air. It really also depends on the source material - I found that playing Appetite for Destruction by Guns n' Roses at over 70% volume through soft-dome tweeters powered by a 25 Watt per channel receiver from the late 1970s absolutely guaranteed destruction.
It's not the square waves that cause the issue....its the power in the harmonics that causes it. Like Paul said, clipping contains lots of high frequency content. Most tweeters can handle only a fraction of the power rating of the speakers themselves. A pair of speakers that can handle 100 watts or more might have tweeters that can only handle 10 watts. A 20 watt amp doesn't look like it should be able to damage the speakers, but full on clipping could result in 20 watts of high frequency content hitting the tweeters, causing them to fail. Over powered amps will usually take out the woofers long before the tweeters
As long as the actual power output of a clipping amp does not exceed the power handling of any of the drivers....they won't blow.
Nice
No one makes a higher powered version of my amps that put out 5 thousand volts.
Please elaborate
@@sebastianholst Its a custom made amp designed to drive electrostatic panels directly.
More importantly . . . is the irreparable damage to one's ears -- especially in the high frequencies! But today, people don't want to think about consequences for their actions . . . they just want the HIGH of the experience . . . and forget about paying a permanent price for such FOOLISHNESS.
russmaleartist You are so right. In fact, my experience is that our hearing is also quite prone to add distortion at very loud levels and that’s a clear warning you should lower the level. I care much less about a burned tweeter than even slight damage to my hearing of let’s say 1% btw. Those of us who enjoy going to concerts and end up standing near some large speakers notice how the following day we can hear the buzzing in our ears. I had this experience with Dire Straits, Pink Floyd, Coldplay and other concerts.
Calm down grandpa
I bet you're the life of the party !!! 😆😂🤣
At typical room levels at home that's not a risk. Headphones and gigs, though, certainly.
Clipping can happen at low volumes. Some people want the sound of a low watt SET but you need an efficient speaker. If that was paired with something that needs power it would clip at a low volume. 75% of your amp power isn't always 75% of your volume knob.
Amplifiers can include a circuit for clipping protection by doing soft clipping, compression or gain reduction when the signal gets too loud. Tube amps usually do soft clipping without added circuits. Best is to always keep the volume down to a level where you don’t notice any distortion. I always go away from the speakers, perhaps open a door and a bit further away to carefully listen to judge if the sound is undistorted cause my own hearing will also distort when it’s very loud and I’m too close to the speakers. Especially if you have a party and planning to play loud, check this before guests are coming.
I've never pushed my amp into clipping.
I'm likely to have ear ache way before it clips.
2k Watt true RMS continuous in a 4 by 4 room.
By the way, also beware that a too large amplifier can blow up a small speaker at sub bass frequencies you might not hear from the smaller speaker. For example, a small bookshelf speaker might be almost silent at 30Hz but if your music has a strong sound at 30Hz then smoke from the voice coil or a bang of the voice coil hitting bottom might be your first sign that you just damaged your speaker.
gotta love that bottom out sound
@@manFromPeterborough Actually it can be a terrible thing where you don't know how much your speaker got damaged. I've seen damage to the voice coil where repeated hits at the bottom caused it to start touching the inner gap making distortion and also damage to the center dust cap getting visibly deformed by the abrupt stop of motion. Recently one of my speakers got a crack in the surround from playing too loud, but one contributing factor was that the rubber material had started to harden making it more fragile. You gotta not love that.
@@ThinkingBetter I've mostly blown the tweeters with 30w amp, when I was teenager, I played the Goldair 20w amp through HMV 6" speakers with full bass and loudness switch on at moderate vol until the bottom out noise started happening and made a tape recording of it playing Mental as Anything - Big Wheel, I watch Garret Claridge blowing speakers and enjoy the Logitech hate video hearing the subwoofer going buzz buzz
vaughn tonkin I had some DIY large speakers using Coral 10 flat drivers and those were sounding like a hammer hits a piece of wood when the voice coils hit bottom.
I use a multimeter and found my amp soft clips at volume 8; at volume 7 there's no clipping and at volume 9 I get hard clipping.
Would you please explain how to use a multimeter to do that? In simple terms please lol
Or if you know where I could get an online tutorial that'd be great & probably easier for both of us.
@@jesusgavemeaids A multimeter cannot show you when an amplifier begins clipping, either soft or hard. You have to use an oscilloscope to view the actual waveform.
I should have known as much.
@@jesusgavemeaids.....using a multimeter is guess work. I researched it online and used a mathematical equation. Use UA-cam and search for "multimeter" and "clipping" or something to that effect. In addition to the videos, just trust your ears.
Beautiful snowy scene out that window....
funny how playing guitar we want the amp clipping
Ah, but guitar amps aren't generally known for having tweeters though, are they?
Not for tube amps. The wave gets comprssiions. JCMP 900 had clipping diodes in its. But the output transformer also get saturated. Electric motors, electric genrtor and transformers have to do with magnetic fileds. The incude th evoltages. Julies Futterman amps DID NOT have a output transformer. Its 2 fffern things!