Still wondering what king of signal will damage a speaker

[Yasoo]

I'm still wondering what kind of signal will damage a speaker. Supposedly clipping can damage a speaker, but I've yet to find any information saying what kind of damage and what level will cause it. +20db spike? +30? +10db continuous signal? Speaker blows up? Speaker stops producing sound? Speakers loses fidelity?

Anyone got any ideas?

 

[Farview]

I'm still wondering what kind of signal will damage a speaker. Supposedly clipping can damage a speaker, but I've yet to find any information saying what kind of damage and what level will cause it. +20db spike? +30? +10db continuous signal? Speaker blows up? Speaker stops producing sound? Speakers loses fidelity?

Anyone got any ideas?

when you clip one speaker, you are trying to make it move farther than it can. so it goes all the way out...stays there for a bit...pulls all the way back...stays there for a bit....repeat...etc. This causes the voice coil to heat up and melt the laquer on the coils and either shorts out (normally starting a small fire) or changes shape enough to scrape the sides of the hole it sits in.

When you clip an amp feeding a 2-way speaker (woofer and tweeter), The amp will clip on low notes first (because they take more power) and create a square wave. Square waves have a huge harmonic content (screaming high end) which gets routed to the tweeter and pops it.

 

[Fletcher]

You also have the "heat" issue with amp clipping, it forces the coil to move in an unnatural manner causing heat... not to mention that the actual cone bends in all kinds of fucked up contortions which causes the paper to go soft [and / or the surround] netting you shit for sound.

At the speaker level, distortion created in the program material [i.e. distorted guitar/vocals/etc.] is OK... distorting the actual speakers either by overdriving the power amp or the speakers themselves is a bad thing [even with distorted guitar sounds, you really want to minimize crushing the speakers unless you enjoy changing drivers on a regular basis... once the speakers in a guitar cabinet "go soft"... you can't buy a tone from them, you have to have the drivers reconed or replaced].

Peace.