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View Full Version : How is power handling measured?



Sivar
03-27-2015, 10:37 AM
I am interested in some detail on Ascend's power handling ratings, specifically the Sierra Tower's and Sierra 2's.

Let's use the tower as an example: It's rated 300W continuous, 500W maximum, with unclipped peaks.


Does "Unclipped peaks" mean that, at 300W/500W, the drivers shouldn't hit their stoppers under normal circumstances at those power levels, but can handle additional power (perhaps briefly) with the possibility of hitting stoppers?
Surely the individual drivers can't handle 300W continuous, right? Is the 300W rating, then, for white noise or some other test that divides the work?
If so, what happens when music, played at a high level, emphasizes notes served by a single driver and serves to it several hundred watts? If this would kill the driver, would such a death be more a function of time (overheating) or physical damage (overextension, etc.)?
About how long could the tower handle 500W with a reasonable probability of no damage? A millisecond? 30 seconds?


In addition to an intellectual curiosity, I have a kid on the way and figure at some point they will play with the stereo.
My amplifier "kind of" has a power meter in the form of a line of blue LEDs for each channel, but it's more decorative than authoritative.

In the worst case, with the towers at their minimum impedance of 4Ω and playing on just one speaker, the amp can deliver 1100W.
That would certainly fry the speaker, but in a more realistic situation of the amp being turned all the way up, in stereo mode, the speakers at 8Ω, the amp can deliver 500W. If such a thing were to happen, I'd like to know whether that means "You just lost $2900" or "Walk downstairs and turn it down before the speakers start to overheat.".