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DIY speakers, Power handling.


Got a question, that any idiot with electrical understanding should know, but for some reason this idiot does not.

When constructing a loudspeaker, (ive read several books on this but non touched on this issue) how do you determine the loudspeakers power handling ability?

Is the power handling the same as the driver with the lowest handling ability?

Is it the sum of the total accepable power loads of all drivers combined?

Or is there an equasion used to figure this out? Like the total watt hgandling devided by number of drivers?

I am now reading some books on Solid State amplifier construction, and Randy Sloan touched on the issue that when driving a loudspeaker that the power is not evenly distributed over all of the drivers, IE, in a 2way design the woofer might use about 60-70% of the power while the tweeter uses only 30-40%. This apparently is one of the reasons there is such a sonic benefit from Bi-Amping so each driver will have access to the full amount of power it desires.

That is probably what im gonna end up doing, custom building the amplifier to match the drivers and bi-amping the little bastards.
slappy

Showing 2 responses by slappy

slappy OP
903 posts
 
Yeah. I got alot of questions because im doing alot of reading.

I got 2 books from Randy Slone about solid state amplifiers, and a couple others about loudspeaker construction.

Im gonna make a total DIY system.

Unfortunatly, the biggest problem with learning from books is the inability to ask questions.

Learning about current mirrors right now.

This SS amplifier design/construction is some pretty interesting stuff. My girlfriend is getting annoyed because im giving more attention to these books than her.
slappy OP
903 posts
 
Dunno Marakanetz,

The amplifier designs in his books boast very very low distortion rates. designs reign 60-550 watts, with distortion levels boasting down to .01% at 20khz and in some designs much much lower.

Hey, gotta start somewhere right?

As for an aneholic room, that is a little down the road.

my goal is to make this stuff for a living, i dont expect to have a viable product that people will want to buy for at least 10 years or so.

More than anything else, i just want to build my own system. I think it would be alot of fun. I want to see how good something i built can sound compared to say, the last rig i had.
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