Greatest. Speaker. Review. Ever.
- Thread starter mito
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Freak'n Big Panda
Regular
lol poor fish. I'm actually beginning to hate logitech speakers btw. I've gone through 2 sets of z5300s and 1 z5500 in the span of 2 years, the subs keep failing. The 5300s are particularly bad for this... if you play them at full volume for more than about 8-9 hours straight they start to break.
Are you serious? For a $150 set of speakers, I'd say you were damned lucky. Full volume likely induces amplifier clipping (especially with an amplifier of the quality you'd expect from such a pricetag...) which then will kill both the amplifier and the speaker driver. In fact, I'm surprised they lived for 8 hours under that kind of duress.
If you need THAT kind of audio level for that kind of time duration, then you need both a MUCH bigger sub and a MUCH bigger amp. Or maybe several much bigger subs and amps.
Seriously, nothing is really made to run at 100% full capacity for that kind of duration.
Freak'n Big Panda
Regular
haha yeah this is what I've learned. I'm going to invest in some proper equipment when I have the cash to do so but for now logitech's standard 2 year warranty will undoubtedly pay off several times over lol
fyi I use my speakers for parties a lot and this is why they see the sort of use they do, with them obviously playing at full or near full volume. Pardon my ignorance but why would amp clipping damage my hardware? I do remember hearing something about amplifier clipping in my circuits class last term but I forget the specifics.
fyi I use my speakers for parties a lot and this is why they see the sort of use they do, with them obviously playing at full or near full volume. Pardon my ignorance but why would amp clipping damage my hardware? I do remember hearing something about amplifier clipping in my circuits class last term but I forget the specifics.
Your ears will fail in 8 years if you continue...
Freak'n Big Panda
Regular
possibly. I'm willing to take the risk XD
Sound, when viewed on an oscilliscope, is a nice smooth collection of waves -- there should never be any "edges", but instead smooth slopes. Clipping is when an amplifier is being driven too hard, to the point where the capacitors within one or more of the amp stages become saturated and can only generate "square waves". These aren't waves, they're basically 100% / 0% iterations. Just by the fact that you're overdriving the caps and supply circuitry is what kills your amplifier.
Next, when an amp being pushed that hard, the output regulation usually goes to hell, so square waves that intro with high current spikes are sent to your speakers. This overcurrent can melt the voice coils when sustained, which results in reduced power handling, lower impedance load on the amp and higher temperatures. This means your amp works even harder, making it die even faster, and also means the speaker coils get hotter, which makes the coils melt further, ad nauseum.
Also, with clipping signals you end up shoving the speaker coils too 100+% extension at both extremes of the Z-axis. This is near-guaranteed to make the voice coils seperate from the cone itself. When the coils become even partially disconnected from the cone, you have a "blown" speaker -- you will know it by the speaker making rattling sounds even at low volume levels. If you can physically touch the speaker cone with both hands, you can gently push the speaker cone straight inwards -- if it makes noise while moving, it is blown (or the coils are so severely damaged that they are scraping against the side of the magnet housing)
That's, in a nutshell, is why clipping is bad
Freak'n Big Panda
Regular
awesome thanks for the info! Now the next question, how do I know what a 'safe' volume is for any given configuration of speaker/amp?
You really don't have a perfect way, which sucks
A "good" amp will have a clip indicator LED on it that will begin to flicker when square waves are being output. It's always better to have an amplifier that is too strong for your speaker rather than vice versa -- that way even at the most extreme power output, you're still sending nice round waves versus squared-off ones. Still, you can trash even the best speaker with too much power.A good rule of thumb on the speaker-side of things is to listen: If you turn up the volume knob and it doesn't get any louder (don't count distortion, that's not good signal) then you've hit the limit of the speaker's capabilities. You should NEVER be at the bleeding-edge of that fine line; your speaker should have plenty of ventilation for cooling and should still have some amount of "wiggle" room before it hits max excursion (the Z-axis movement that creates sound waves) The first thing to listen for as an indicator of speaker duress is the bass level -- as bass requires the most excusion to create sound. It's likely that more amplifier knob-turnage will give you more treble, but at some point the excusion limit will come when you're pounding the bass-line. When the bass distorts, you're over the edge!
A good rule of thumb for amplifiers is that whatever your preferred audio level is -- your audio equipment should be able to sustain that at ~50% output level. If you have to rotate the knob past 50% for any notable amount of time, your equipment likely isn't enough for your needs. At that level, you begin fighting efficiency (ie heat, and the ability to cope with that heat), sound quality concerns (signal-to-noise, sound floor and tonal quality all get worse as things heat up and efficiency drops), and of course the obvious clipping concerns.
The only time the amplifier general-rule doesn't apply is when you're dealing with UBER equipment, as the really pricey stuff is made to work well into the 80+% arena. It's still not suggested to run it that hard, but at least the power supplies, caps, mosfets and other items are more geared to that kind of abuse.
I don't think you followed the entire thread
That's likely not the cause of his failure, and you also missed:Freak'n Big Panda
Regular
Ah kk I believe my current set of z5500s might be on their last legs then, the bass is distorting fairly easily these days. Maybe @ about 33% volume in bass heavy songs and it defiantly does not get louder past that point (but as you mentioned the treble does). Do you happen to own a set of these speakers? If you do what can you run them at safely without risking damaging them?
Nope, I don't own those. I do own an old-assed set of Logitech 5.1 speakers, but I can't remember the model... Maybe 530's? They're not very powerful compared to the set you're talking about, but they're more than enough for my gaming entertainment.
I have a home theater setup that is much more appropriate for hosting parties
I have a home theater setup that is much more appropriate for hosting parties
My first set of floorstanding speakers were some wharfedale SP-89s, english built ones too. From back when wharfe weren't such a 'common' brand. Anyway. They were second hand, because I was poor, and a friend - an 'audio expert' - insisted this was a *good sign*.
Needless to say, I later discovered how badly damaged the innards were - spiders were ripped from the coils. Cue lots of glue. They worked a lot better, but were fragile.
Needless to say, one of my flatmates blew them up about a year later.
Freak'n Big Panda
Regular
lol @ duel cores
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