subwoofers
10-04-2006, 08:57 PM
#1
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Car: 89 Camaro Z28
Engine: 327
Transmission: 4 speed m22
subwoofers
will it hurt the subwoofers if music plays through them and not just bass
Last edited by zz327; 10-04-2006 at 09:25 PM.
10-04-2006, 11:33 PM
#4
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Car: 88 GTA
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That was completely uncalled for. Everyone asks questions that might seem stupid to someone else from time to time. That's how we all have learned in the past. You don't just wake up one day and understand the entire known universe.
This message board isn’t for arguing, picking fights, or flaming. The mods are quick to act - posts get deleted, threads locked, and users banned on repeat offenses. We’re all here for a common cause – to make the cars we love better. Let’s not start calling each other juvenile names.
It won’t hurt the sub at all. Period. There’s no way it will do any damage. There are a number of reasons for this.
Reason #1 - Think of the speaker spectrum - woofers, midranges, tweeters, etc as a one way road. Drivers that are low on the spectrum can produce frequencies higher on the spectrum but drivers that are high on the spectrum can’t produce frequencies that are lower on the spectrum. For example, we’ve all seen an instance of an 8” or even 12” woofer playing well above 5KHz or even 10KHz (if anyone here plays electric guitar they’ve probably seen this done with a 15”). On the other hand you will never see a tweeter playing a 100 Hz tone, let alone a 20 Hz rumble. This leads into the next reason.
Reason #2 - The lower the frequency the more power it requires to reproduce. This is why subwoofers require gobs of power while tweeters will generally make your ears bleed with 25 watts. This means two things. First, high frequency sounds don’t require a lot of power. The second is that low frequency sound can require a lot of power.
Conclusion - There are three primary killers of speakers. First and foremost is sending a speaker too much power and blowing the voice coil, literally melting the wire(s) wound around the former. The second is caused by excessive clipping and results in the same death for the speaker (blown voice coil). The third is over-excursion and occurs when the cone literally moves too far and either bottoms out or the cone tries to go too far out and the voice coil pops out of the coil gap.
There’s no difference with subwoofers. You can send it as much high frequency information as you want and it won’t hurt it at all. It's not going to give the woofer too much power. It's not going to make the voice coil over heat. It's not going to bottom out the woofer. It will just sound like crap when it tries to reproduce higher frequency sound.
... All this said, why would you want to play high frequency sound through your sub?
This message board isn’t for arguing, picking fights, or flaming. The mods are quick to act - posts get deleted, threads locked, and users banned on repeat offenses. We’re all here for a common cause – to make the cars we love better. Let’s not start calling each other juvenile names.
It won’t hurt the sub at all. Period. There’s no way it will do any damage. There are a number of reasons for this.
Reason #1 - Think of the speaker spectrum - woofers, midranges, tweeters, etc as a one way road. Drivers that are low on the spectrum can produce frequencies higher on the spectrum but drivers that are high on the spectrum can’t produce frequencies that are lower on the spectrum. For example, we’ve all seen an instance of an 8” or even 12” woofer playing well above 5KHz or even 10KHz (if anyone here plays electric guitar they’ve probably seen this done with a 15”). On the other hand you will never see a tweeter playing a 100 Hz tone, let alone a 20 Hz rumble. This leads into the next reason.
Reason #2 - The lower the frequency the more power it requires to reproduce. This is why subwoofers require gobs of power while tweeters will generally make your ears bleed with 25 watts. This means two things. First, high frequency sounds don’t require a lot of power. The second is that low frequency sound can require a lot of power.
Conclusion - There are three primary killers of speakers. First and foremost is sending a speaker too much power and blowing the voice coil, literally melting the wire(s) wound around the former. The second is caused by excessive clipping and results in the same death for the speaker (blown voice coil). The third is over-excursion and occurs when the cone literally moves too far and either bottoms out or the cone tries to go too far out and the voice coil pops out of the coil gap.
There’s no difference with subwoofers. You can send it as much high frequency information as you want and it won’t hurt it at all. It's not going to give the woofer too much power. It's not going to make the voice coil over heat. It's not going to bottom out the woofer. It will just sound like crap when it tries to reproduce higher frequency sound.
... All this said, why would you want to play high frequency sound through your sub?
Last edited by Gummie; 10-04-2006 at 11:37 PM.
10-05-2006, 08:30 AM
#7
It won't hurt a thing, but it will sound like ***.
Subwoofers are big, heavy beasts that are designed to pump a lot of air. Such monsters are not at all optimized for higher frequency reproduction, and in most cases with the new breed of high mass, high excursion subs, they are completely incapable of reproducing anything above 80-200hz depending on their design. If they can play those frequencies at all, they sure won't sound good doing it. But... there will be no damage of any kind if you still feed them a full-range signal.
However, the opposite isn't true. If you feed a full range signal to tweeters or even smaller mids, you can easily damage them. Small drivers are not capable of moving enough to produce bass, and they'll destroy themselves trying.
Fortunately, your car already has other speakers in it, so there is absolutely no need for you to run the subs full-range.
Subwoofers are big, heavy beasts that are designed to pump a lot of air. Such monsters are not at all optimized for higher frequency reproduction, and in most cases with the new breed of high mass, high excursion subs, they are completely incapable of reproducing anything above 80-200hz depending on their design. If they can play those frequencies at all, they sure won't sound good doing it. But... there will be no damage of any kind if you still feed them a full-range signal.
However, the opposite isn't true. If you feed a full range signal to tweeters or even smaller mids, you can easily damage them. Small drivers are not capable of moving enough to produce bass, and they'll destroy themselves trying.
Fortunately, your car already has other speakers in it, so there is absolutely no need for you to run the subs full-range.
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