Well, thank you for pointing out one of my statements. I'm not quite sure what your point was in doing so, but thank you for reiterating it. I think people in here are intelligent enough to understand my statements the first time I make them, but I suppose I have no real issue if someone wants to quote them for no apparent reason.

Yet again, "I've been in the field for 30 years", quoted time and time again, but it means crap. Please, oh please, allow me to quote you from the first thread I hyperlinked in my last post...

You give me so much material to work with here, I'm almost giddy

By your own words, you deem yourself an "expert" in the audio field because:
1) You were "a corporate sales and product trainer for 5 of those 30yrs". You sold products and showed people how to press buttons...was it that part of your experience that makes you an expert?
2) You were "an IASCA judge for 3yrs". You listened to competition systems and judged them....was it THAT part of your experience that makes you an expert?
3) You "hav done product evaluations from autosound systems to high-end home audio components for approx 10yrs". You listened to other people's products and formed an opinion about the quality...maybe it was this part of your experience that makes you an expert in the audio field?

Oh, I know, it's you saying "I know what I'm talking about!" that makes you an expert, right? Just so all of us are clear, and as you say "let others in here decide for themselves", you are a self-proclaimed expert in the audio field because you distributed pamphlets and told people how a piece of equipment could be played with, you formed an opinion and passed judgement on competition system (woo hoo, 3 years...be still my heart), and you formed an opinion on the quality of all kinds of stereo system (both car audio and high-end home system...well gosh, I'm about to faint!). <shrug> I don't know, maybe I'm missing it, so maybe you can help point it out to me...exactly WHERE in all of that did you actually learn something that makes you an expert in how audio systems work? Well, you know, other than forming an opinion on how you think it works...

It doesn't matter how many times you repeat it to yourself "I'm an expert, I'm an expert" in a Dorothy and her ruby slippers fashion, it still doesn't make you one. I'm more than happy to let people decide on their own who is giving them intelligent information, but until I start seeing it come from your direction, I'm going to be on your wrong answers like white in the Pope.

I disagree with modifry from time to time, but eventually we both realize it's due to miscommunication of our ideas. We're talking about the ame facts, but we're not always using the same language. PJK3, NFRs2000NYC, others, etc. and I disagree from time to time, and sometimes we may never agree on a subject, but even when we disagree, we always do our best to argue based upon what we believe the facts are. The best you come back with is "You can't argue with me, I'm an expert...if you want to know the truth, listen to me". It's laughable, nearing pathetic.

I split hairs with people like modifry because I know he has the training and experience TO split hairs with me. With you, I spend too much time just trying to chop the entire head off. Your information is so off base at times, splitting hairs would be like putting out a forest fire with a garden hose, completely ineffectual. Most of us are trying to figure out the cause of the fire, while you sit back and say "Look at all of the damage the SMOKE caused". I like to give people the benefit of the doubt, that even if ignorant of the facts they still have the intelligence to understand those facts when properly presented...I'm believing less and less of that ability exists on you.

So go right ahead, proclaim your "expertness" in the audio field, continue to spout screwed up information. But please, SPARE us the rhetoric about how your time is so valuable as to argue the finer points. If you were such an expert, you would be able to settle the arguments with a quick smattering of facts and be done with it. Instead, you always fall back to the good ol' "I'm too busy to explain myself", or "You obviously don't have the ability to understand where I'm coming from, so get back to me when you do". The truth is, you couldn't argue your way out of a wet paper bag when it comes to audio, and that truth has been proven over and over again.

 

With stupid statements like this, it really doesn't take an "expert" to see that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. You're always screaming facts! facts!facts!..............lol.............let's see some yourself! I respond to threads to try and "help" others get the most enjoyment out of their equipment, not hang out like a vulture like yourself and try and rip everyone's posts apart because thats where you get your enjoyment. If you made a post stating "the tooth fairy left some money under my pillow last night", none of us would need to respond with any "facts" to dispute your statement because of the shear stupidity of it in the first place.......................just like most of your posts about amps and audio gear. You can continue to post your "opinions" since you lack the knowledge, experience, OR expertise to post anything else. PK3 and a few others in here have a good background in audio and make that obvious..............unlike yourself that just want AND enjoy being an annoying pest with nothing positive to share.

 

wow...



and Mac - i don't think we've disagreed all that often, but even then i always have the highest respect for your knowledge. outside of me brain farting every so often (RMS doh!), and you not believing in my golden (*cough*bronze*cough*) ears...


Bob, honestly dude... i have to agree with Mac here. i've long since stopped trying to correct you, but instead just try to provide proper information.... especially since even when you're blatantly wrong, you refuse to even pay attention to the logical and factual proofs provided by others... you do instead just echo back the same 'electronics/stereo urban legends' over and over and over...

and once again -- on this topic, you're mostly wrong. sorry, because you seem like a nice enough guy... but clearly your technical and objective training is lacking, even if your subjective experience isn't.

 

side note: Phil, was just trying to make the point that not all of us agree everytime like a mini cult, no offense meant, just so ya know.



I guess Bob thinks I've made some sort of incorrect statement and will recant at any moment, so he keeps quoting me. Here Bob, let me help you...

MacGyver says,"...a 2000W amp with major distortion is not going to blow a 3000W speaker..."

Unless I screwed up the math (which, knowing modifry, he'll check my math and show I somehow said 1+1=3 again I keep doing that, not sure why), I stick to my previous statement....again. To whit, 2,000Wrms gives up 2,800Wpeak...by it's own listed parameteres, a speaker rated for 3000Wrms should have no issue with 2,800Wpeak. Unless there is something so special about you Bob, that you're able to change the laws of physics for the rest of the world, that's the way it is. Or, God forbid, you want to start claiming again that "distortion kills!" like a religous zealot without half a clue what that truly means.

If your intent is the help others, as you claim, then make sure your information is correct, otherwise you're not "helping" at all! If you think I " hang out like a vulture...and try and rip everyone's posts apart because thats where [I] get [my] enjoyment", you're only partly correct. I enjoy a good technical debate, particularly one where everyone (including me) learns something in the process. But if you think I'll idly stand by while some self-centered blowhard such as yourself spews false information like they just came back from a college kegger, you're sadly mistaken...you might as well go back to the unmonitored newsgroups where any moron can have a voice.

Stick to the "This speaker sounds better than that one" advice, you can't go wrong as it's only an opinion...we already know opinions are like a$$holes, everyone has one and no one thinks theirs stinks, but none of us try to pawn off their opinions as facts, something you do quite often. I back my statements up with common sense, equations, and cold hard numbers. Evidently common sense is not that common anymore.

If I ever made a post saying "the tooth fairy left some money under my pillow last night", one of two things would be true. First, I would be inebrieted when making that claim (or just plain lost my mind from staring at LEDs all night long), realize my mistake in the morning, and make a correction post, clearly stating my mistake and taking full responsibility for it (well, as much responsibility as people take these days when they've done something while drunk). Or second, I would have same pretty damn good evidence that the Tooth Fairy DID exist...and believe you me, YOU would be one of the last people I would tell (you can watch it on CNN).

But do you honestly believe no one here listens to my "stupid posts" about amps and audio gear? It must truly be nice to live in your world, where reality doesn't quite intrude into your life. It's becoming outright pathetic that you believe the dribble coming from your mouth, EVEN when proven wrong time and time again.

Yes, PJK3 DOES have a good grasp of the audio world, so does NFRs2000NYC, and modifry, and darkknight, and a whole slew of others I can't remember to mention. You , on the other hand, seemingly have a short grasp on reality. Maybe you'd like to run back through some posts form the past and see how much we all agree on certain things? Oh, sorry, you probably don't want to do that because it would require actual work and you miht actually learn the truth....my bad.

 

I have to disagree again with some of that.. Distortion often is what blows speakers, not always too much power. Yes a 2000 watt amp can blow a 3000 watt speaker, if you turn up the gain and turn up the bass controls on your cd player, and then get tons of distortion. You will blow them. If you jsut turn them up too much, and your amp cant make the power, it can blow them.

I know ive blown 2 500 watt subs with a single 600 watt amp. I know tons of friends to blow subs with amps that cant put to much power out for them

I work for circuit city and go to school. People bring in 1000watt peak subs blown all the time. They will have a single 700-1000 watt peak amp pushing both. Why do there subs blow? It is either distortion or the subs simply cant handle power above RMS for very long.

If it is the latter, you would not want to pick an amp that produces above the speakers RMS very often.

Also.... Why do people blow factory speakers? Becuase they turn them up too high. It is not because the amp (internal or external)produces more power, its because it produces more distortion.

(i have one contact in, my proof reading skills may not be great, but i hope you get the point)

 

pike,

The difference (or lack thereof, to be more precise) between distortion destroying speakers and too much power killing them has been discussed on multiple ocassions over the years on this board, the following thread being the latest rehashing of old ideas...

http://forums.s2ki.com/forums/showthread.p...threadid=155539

It's a lack of understanding of what distortion is that throws people for a loop. I won't rehash it here as the above thread goes into enough detail. Suffice it to say, heavy distortion is, in no uncertain words, destroying a speaker by applying too much power, so to argue one kills speakers more often than the other is practically a circular argument.

Your comment of "the subs simply cant handle power above RMS for very long" follows by the mere definition of rms. A speaker is rated for a particular power handling capability, specifically the average (or rms) power. If you continue to push a higher than rated power through the speaker, thereby raising the average power above the rated specs, the speaker will blow. So, to say any speaker can't handle power above it's rated rms current for very long is a given, and also a truthful statement. No argument from me there, I completely agree. Again, you say "you would not want to pick an amp that produces above the speakers RMS very often", and again, I completely agree, for the exact reasons just mentioned. To choose an amp that will take the average power through the speaker higher than it's rated for is a recipe for disaster.

Why do people blow factory speakers? The reasons can vary from system to system, but I would be willing to bet that over-spec power levels (yes, from distortion) would be to blame. For example, let's say the speaker is rated for 15Wrms (as in the original S2000), and the stereo is rated for 15Wrms (if memory serves). Sounds groovy, right? No, I say the stereo will eventually destroy the speaker. Why? Simple...too high power levels from distortion.

"But Dan", you say, "doesn't that go against everything you've stated so far?" No, and here's the reason. If the amp was perfect, you could turn it all of the way up and provide a distortion-free signal at an average of 15W...hence, the speaker would be fine. However, amps are not perfect, as we all know, and distortion results as we near the amp's limits. Although the stereo is rated for an average of 15W output, the stereo is now actually producing much higher levels of power, certainly well above 15W of average power. In doing so, we significantly raise the average power the speaker sees due to that distortion, well beyond the 15W average the speaker was rated for. After a while, the coil finally gives up the ghost. Again, it's easy for someone to say "The distortion killed the speaker", but the truth of the matter is it was the increase in average power brought on by the distortion. Now, if the speaker was rated for 25Wrms, even at max distortion the 15Wrms stereo wouldn't do any permanent damage to the speaker. Again, the reason is because the average current from the screwed up stereo would be around 22W, and we just said that a 25Wrms speaker could handle an average current of 25W.

People blow speakers all of the time, swearing they did nothing wrong, the amp worked fine, the speaker was fine, the specs checked out, yadda yadda yadda, and it's difficult to determine the root cause unless the person is VERY honest with the debugger and the debugger is able to get all of the necessary information.

There was another discussion a couple of years back by a guy who claimed that CD-Rs destroyed car CD players. His contention was that, from information he heard from several "reliable" sources, information on the CD-Rs made the motor spin continually faster compared to standard CDs that always turned the same speed and burned out the bearings. his "proof" was every CD player that was returned broken had a CD-R stuck in it. Now obviously this is a bad deduction. His confusion came from his lack of understanding on how CD players worked, and the facts at hand. ALL CDs spin at various rates dependant upon how far away from the center the laser pickup is, regardless of the CD type or data on it, but he didn't understand that fact, so his first guess was irrelevant. Second, if he had bothered to ask the right questions of the customer, he would probably have come to a different conclusion and looked elsewhere for the cuplrit. Had he bothered to ask these "kids" how often they listen to burned CDs compared to store-bought CDs (remember, this was the heyday of downloading mp3s and burning your own), he would probably have found that most of their "traveling collection" was burned CDs, not store bought, thereby HIGHLY increasing the chance of seeing a burned CD in the player when it broke. False conclusions were made from both false information and true data. Even the best scientist falls prey to it at times.

 

I just dont think so man.... Distortion is not just from having too much power, ill talk to an MECP and get back to you. Maybe distortion isnt the right word. All i know is that you can buy 70watt RMS door speakers, run them off of a 18-22RMSx4 deck and blow them. It is because you turn them up to high and htey arnt clear... and they blow. I call that distortion, but maybe there is another word for it.

 

And.. either way, by what you just said and what i said earlier, I was right on the whole point of this thread

You dont want a Amp that does 30percent more RMS then a speaker can handle. If an amp does 100watts RMS at 12.4 volts, you will get more then this RMS, unless you like to listen a lot with your car turned off. You will be running above 13.0 volts and closer to 14.4 most of the time.

 

S2k_PikeStyle:

you really really need to read this article...

http://www.bcae1.com/2ltlpwr.htm

then realize that the distortion you're claiming destroys speakers is actually too much power being delivered to the speakers because of severe clipping.

physical damage and too much power are really the only things that destroy speakers. distortion in and of itself does not... the byproducts of audible distortion are where your damage comes from...

i know... just trying to throw in a little levity...

 

Just to clear up the math, I think 2000 watts RMS will give 4000 watts peak.

Power (P) = V*I
V=I*R or I = V/R

so

P=V^2/R

RMS power is based on RMS voltage, and peak power is based on peak voltage. To calculate peak voltage, multiply RMS voltage by root 2:

Vpeak = Vrms * 2^0.5

If you sub that back into the power equation, you get:

Prms = Vrms^2 / R
Ppeak = ( Vrms*2^.5 )^2 / R
= Vrms^2 *2 / R
= ( Vrms^2 / R ) *2
= Prms * 2

Chris.