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speaker excursion..."mo power"..and bass..Sean

I'd be interested in everyone's thoughts, but hopefully Sean will chime in...

Some reading I've been doing & the "is 22 watts enough" discussion has raised a question in my mind. I'll use the Linkwitz Orions as the example, but the real questions will (should?) apply to powering most any driver.

I've been reading Linkwitz's site on the Orions, some of the theory, what it takes to build them, suggested power..etc...and I remember some post that I read in the A-gon or AA archives stating that the 60 watts Siegfred suggests isn't enough to give significant bass. I read on the SL site that he likes the 60 watts as the amp will clip just before the speaker can reach full excursion & thereby the driver will not sustain damage. He continues to state that the higher power amp he suggests (a larger ATI) will result in the driver reaching full excursion prior to the amp bottoming out & thus driver damage may result.

>Proponents of "lower is plenty" might be, at least conceptually, in line with the needed power to reach a driver's maximum excursion (almost by defintion) being all the power necessary.

>Then comes the "more power, preferrably gobs more clean power" crowd that says more power is the best in most applications.

So my question(s):

>Is the difference between these two camps just "time"(instantaneous versus continuous power)? i.e Lots of mostly unused power sitting "idle" as a reserve for the couple millisecond demand of those dynamic peaks?

>From what I've read the SL Orions do very, to exceptionally, well on bass even with the 60 watts. How would 200 watts instead of his 60 improve the bass if the drivers bottom out at a little over 60 watts? Is it again just the millisecond peak demand for power that would be available or is there another reason?
fishboat
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Cinematic_systems...Whoops! You are right that in a second order or higher passive crossover some power is "dumped to ground". For example, for the woofer, after the inductor rolls off the highs, a capacitor to ground rolls them off further. However, I don't believe that the "dumped" power amounts to much, as the "dumping" starts near zero at the X/O frequency and increases at 6 dB/oct, but working with an input that is already rolling off at 6 dB/octive. Perhaps there is an EE out there who still remembers how to calculate the "dumped" power in a second or third order crossover. Fourth order would involve a second "dump".

If Sean is right, and we all got rid of passive crossovers, perhaps the global warming problem would be solved.
kpinneo
10 posts
 
Great thread, and very interesting to me as I am in the process of building a highly-tweaked system around the Orions. I'm almost finished building them, and I added to Linkwitz' design by building in substantial dampening aids.
Here's my system as it will be in about one month:
McIntosh MC-275 driving tweeters
Tenor 75WP monoblocks driving midranges
Butler TDB 5150 driving woofers (150watts each)
Sony SCD-1
Supratek Sauvignon linestage
Linkwitz active x-over
Chimera labs litzbraid custom speaker cables
Chimera labs litzbraid interconnects
BPT 3.5 Signature Conditioner

I'm a bit concerned about the synergy between amps, and I intend to be extremely careful of volume levels,but it should sound fabulous. Any thoughts re: this setup from other members would be welcome. I know this doesn't directly answer the question, Fishboat, but maybe the system's performance characteristics when done would be interesting to you or others.
sean
6,231 posts
 
I've been busy for a few days, hence the lack of response.

As to my comments about "damping factor being a hoax", i'm not saying that low output impedances are a joke. What i'm saying is that how people interpret the impedance relationship between an amp and a speaker and what it means to "driver control" is mostly incorrect.

The closer your speaker impedance is to the output impedance of the amp, the more that the reactance / loading characteristics of the speaker will control or "highly influence" the output of the amp. The further apart they are ( a higher damping factor ), the less influence the loudspeaker load will have on the amp. This is NOT the same thing as the amp having greater control over the speaker. The only thing that allows an amplifier to "control" a loudspeaker is voltage and current output.

Cinematic: Your post saying that we are 50% wrong ( or is it 50% right? ) is 75% incorrect, but i don't have time to clarify point by point. Thanks for stopping by though... : ) Sean
>
cinematic_systems
282 posts
 
Actually your right Sean, Bombaywalla through me off so much I attached what he was saying to your comments.

Although I disagree with two of your comments, factually they are not incorrect.

So I was 66% incorrect :)
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