Capacitors DO lose power. This is called "dielectric absorption". ESR is also a term used to describe the series resistance or "internal losses" of a capacitor. If the power loss is severe, the cap "cooks" itself from the inside out and doesn't last very long or changes value to the point that normal circuit operation becomes harder and harder to achieve.
Inductors DO lose power i.e. it is called series resistance. Besides that, some of the energy is dissipated in the magnetic field that the inductor creates and / or through inductive coupling to other nearby parts of the circuit that they shouldn't be in. This is why proper crossover layout is important. I've seen "high end" crossover circuits that had a tremendous amount of crosstalk taking place due to this coupling. The end result is that tweeters and midranges end up being fed energy that should have gone to the woofer. Why did this take place? The inductors are too close together, placed in the same horizontal or vertical plane, etc... Due to their close proximity, the coils become inductively coupled via the previously mentioned magnetic field. By simply changing the horizontal and / or vertical planes of the inductors, without even moving them further apart, crosstalk can be reduced by at least -40 dB's. Not only does this result in less loss in the circuit, but better sound due to less smearing. Power handling is also improved due to having a more effective frequency dividing network with less stray coupling.
The use of a Zobel network that is tuned to operate within the audible pass-band WILL attenuate energy. The capacitor selects what frequency the Zobel comes into play and the value of the resistor dictates how much energy it will consume. If one does not use a resistor of high enough power handling and / or the value is poorly chosen, you WILL burn up the resistor in the Zobel when "cranking" the volume way up on a steady-state basis.
All of these parts DO rise in temperature as they are used and this is part of what "component settling" is all about. If the average power that they are passing is high enough, you would feel the heat that they were dissipating. Since most music is very low in average power consumption and very high in peak power, the energy lost / heat generated within these parts isn't very high and / or consistent. It is these very short duration, high intensity peaks that get "eaten up" in a passive crossover, hence the increase in dynamics and increased detail that one encounters from going active. All of the aforementioned losses in the passive circuit end up costing resolution while increasing the levels of inductive and capacitive reactance that the amp tries to load into.
"Thus, the practical increase in effective power is more like 2X, as that 1975 article you refer to showed".
Doubling the power ( X2 ) is a 100% increase. Losing half the power ( /2 ) is a 50% loss. We've said the same thing using different wording looking at things from opposite points of view.
As far as the 30 / 60 wpc actively crossed amps clipping at the same appr output level as that of the 175 wpc passively crossed amplifier, i can't help you out there. I referenced this from Vance Dickason's Loudspeaker Design Cookbook and do not have access to the original article. Your own response seems to confirm these figures rather than contradict them.
The comments about the active crossovers increasing the gain of the signal have little to nothing to do with amplifier capacity. The amplifier can only put out so much power prior to clipping regardless of whether it has to amplify itself is providing the gain or whether the drive levels are increased. If anything, increasing the drive levels via the active crossover would have driven the amplifier into clipping sooner and more consistently. This is because the amplifier functions at a constant rate of gain, so long as it is linear in operation. More drive means more clipping.
Damping factor is a hoax and is completely taken out of context. I've explained this in the past several times. Couple this with the fact that your .1 ohm output of the SS amplifier is typically fed into 40 - 120 ohm speaker cable to get to your 4 - 12 ohm speakers and you should begin to understand why i rant about using "properly designed" low impedance speaker cables as much as i do. You guys are missing the boat on this one in tall fashion.
Reflected EMF is a reality that the amps have to deal with. If it were not, microphones would not work or produce voltage and we couldn't use them to capture acoustic signals to make recordings with. Now take the microphones that produce EMF and increase their capture area ( cone size ) and motor structure by a few dozen times and tell me that they don't generate voltages, especially when their excursions are made in great amplitude and speed. Just as feeding voltage into a coil in a magnetic field causes the cone to move, moving the cone that has the coil attached to it that is placed within the magnetic field generates voltage. This is an action / reaction that is unavoidable. Obviously, one has to "out muscle" the other opposing source of voltage / current, otherwise the two would cancel each other out as heat and there would be no acoustic output what so ever.
"The externally mounted 3.5mH inductors of my MG1.6 are 10 AWG air core coils with dc resistance of 0.2 ohms, which is about the same as the original equipment iron core inductors. Since the driver is 4 ohms, 0.2/4 which is 5 percent of the power will end up as heat in the inductor".
Bombaywall, El just answered your "Thermal losses in a capacitor & coil????? Physics does not allow this!" comment. On top of that, he was talking about a 5% thermal loss using a 10 gauge conductor, which has very low series resistance. How much more loss is there in an inductor that is wound using a 16 - 20 gauge conductor as found in most commercially produced loudspeakers?
"It is dangerous to run a tweeter directly from a power amp. Turnon and turnoff can be accompanied by "thumps" that the tweeter won't like, and a loose interconnect can be an instant disaster."
If you look at some of the old Stereo Review, Audio and even Stereophile reviews of speakers, i think that you'll find that many tweeters will easily cope with transient bursts into the 100's if not 1000+ watt range, so long as they are limited in duration. I've seen tests were the tweeters handled more power than the woofers did, so long as they were bandwidth limited. Other than that, the easy way to get around "turn on surges" is not to turn your gear off.
"I think that it was on the Adair Audio website that I read that VCs are only about 1-2% efficient! I was shocked to read such a low number - I knew that they were largely inefficient but wasn't expecting 1-2%! If that's true, it's easy to see why "Duration" would fry a tweeter."
Pretty efficient horn designs only come up around 4% - 5% or so. Almost all of the power generated within an amplifier is dissipated as thermal losses in a loudspeaker. As such, removing even several tenths of one percentage point via getting rid of "lossy" passive components between the amplifier and driver can make a sizeable difference. Increasing power transfer via proper impedance matching can also improve system efficiency AND improve transient characteristics.
Sorry if this jumps around quite a bit, but i'm limited on time. Due to my increased work load ( busiest time of the year ) and changes in my personal schedule due to family health problems, i can't hang out here as much as i'd like. Hope this at least clarifies a few things. Sean
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