Playing with Tones...

[gordone]

Silly question - I was playing with the Tone Generator in Cool Edit, and decided to see what my Monitors (Tannoy Active Reveals) could handle. I generated a 20Hz sine wav, and played it back (via my Delta 44). Now I didn't hear much, but my woofers were shaking in fear! Is this bad for my speakers/hearing/sanity/girlfriend's sanity?
But seriously, could this cause any damage to my speakers? I did start with the volume all the way down and slowly brought it up. I also did this with a 10Hz tone. Now that one I really couldn't hear!, but it was cool to see the woofers go in and out at a rate of 10 hertz!

Thanks!

-Evan
"There are no stupid questions, only stupid people who ask questions"

 

[MONTE]

Very low frequencies at high enough levels can do serious damage to speakers. Actually any frequency at a high enough level can damage a speaker, but low frequencies drive a speaker's voice coil both way into the gap and possibly completely out of the gap in the magnet structure. This action could very easily deform your voice coil and more importantly cost you money. If you want to see things go "way in and way out", I can think of more amusing and enjoyable ways to achieve this...possibly with the girlfriend you mentioned?