When does clipping occur and why? What can be damaged in clipping--the amp or the speakers? My receiver has a soft clipping feature but I never use it.
Image drawing a wave form and then clipping the top end off with scisors. That's clipping. You are asking the amp to create a wave form bigger than it can so the extra part gets cut off.
Why does it matter? Because that complex wave form with square edge contains a lot of high frequencies. There's the main frequency that you are trying to generate and lots of harmonics to add up to the square wave.
And why does that matter? Because loudspeaker drivers aren't created equally. When a speaker is rated at 100W, the manufacturer doesn't expect you to give it 100W of high frequency content. The tweeter can handle a lot less power than the woofer. So this high frequency content burst can blow a tweeter.
Soft clipping is a way to detect that an amplifier is reaching its limit and prevent it from making that square wave, and rounding off the edges a bit. That makes for less high frequency content, sounds better and doesn't blow tweeters.
Can you damage the amp when this happens or just the smaller speaker. When you say that the wave form is bigger than the amp can produce do you mean in terms of power or volume or do you mean frequency extremes?
Yes if done on a continuous basis. Different amps handle it different. I have power amp have have prorection modes where they shut off output for a second when overloaded.
When you say that the wave form is bigger than the amp can produce do you mean in terms of power or volume or do you mean frequency extremes?
Paul the only buzzing and humming is caused by those Cerwin Veggys you have!
I thought you were more mature than that! Usually your comments are quite amusing but now they are becoming a pain! If you don't like NAD that is fine but don't forget 99% of us would never even think of owning anything you have except I would take that wonderful sub you own!
Paul, get real you have been on here doggin Nad out for weeks,surely you dont think that Best Buy version Yammie you have is in the same league as Nad.
Tawaun, Paul thinks it's much better than anything NAD ever made. But Paul doesn't listen to music and cares only for the loudness of explosions. The newcomers to the forum simply need a disclaimer from him. They might assume that his 1700+ post count implies he's an expert and respected memeber of the forum.
Well explosions,music whatever his Yammie is inferior to a Nad reciever in every way,and a few others that is in its price range Ive got a 7 year old Onkyo that weighs 31 pound that will make your yammie explode.
Personally all Yammies should be sold sold Best Buy,they are probably the most overrated reciever on the market.The only one they have ever made that was any good was the DSP-1.