Re: speaker cab noise

Jose de las Heras wrote:

I would not like, in principle, to have a cab rated lower than the amp, because if I drive teh amp hard I can damage the speakers, obviously.
Headroom has little to do with that. You want headroom? You get an amp that can output enough watts. THEN you pair it with a cab rated appropriately (similar watts or higher). The watts rating of the cab only indicates what sort of power they can deal with without distortion/damage.

Cabinets are capable handling transients well in excess of their continuous power rating. Why would you buy speakers with continuous ratings that match your peak ratings? I mean, that's expensive and heavy.

Sure you can use a 50W cab with a 300W amp, as long as you play at low volumes. But I wouldn't like to do that regularly because there's teh risk you may push it ghard inadvertently.

The problem you have there is *not* the cab being rated less than the amp. The problem is having a cab not adequate for the situation. The correct resolution is a cab with a higher power rating.

I'd get a cab rated at the very least 300W, or higher than that, generally. The higher the better, then I'll know that the speakers won't be working at anything close to their limit no matter how hard I push the amp.

That's the key. If you push the amp into clipping, it won't matter if your speakers are rated really high, you can still damage them.

Why would you have a power amp rated 5x the safe handling power of the cabs?
If you want headroom... get a powerful power amp, of course... but don't use lower ratings for teh speakers. What good can it come from that?

Define "safe handling power" as you understand it.

I guess the message really is that whatever amp you use, it works best if you don't push it to the max. So if you use a high power amp, you may get away with using lower rating cabs, because you don't intend to push the amp hard. But from there, to actually recommending lower rating cabs... that's quite a distance. You can get away with that... but surely you should aim for the appropriate rating to deal with the full output of the amp?

Sound reinforcement professionals do this all the time. The 4x to 5x number was from a book I own on the subject. If you're taking his advice to calculate how much coverage you need in a given venue, then you won't be overdriving your cabinets. And if you need to add a cabinet or two, you can do it. But that's for PA systems.



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