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DeafYet

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Clipping is an electrical property, not mechanical. It refers to the voltage profile going to your driver

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Thanks for the info, so my follow up question. So for my understanding then, when you clip I thought it was the sub bottoming out, creating a short, hence why coils would overheat. Short by bottoming out…. If it’s an electrical property, when the signal is clipped, what is it doing to the sub to make it heat up so fast?

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54 minutes ago, DeafYet said:

Thanks for the info, so my follow up question. So for my understanding then, when you clip I thought it was the sub bottoming out, creating a short, hence why coils would overheat. Short by bottoming out…. If it’s an electrical property, when the signal is clipped, what is it doing to the sub to make it heat up so fast?

If I'm incorrect with any of this, please correct me.

I think what you're referring to is the subwoofer reaching its mechanical limits. That happens when a subwoofer is getting too much power for it to handle, or playing lower than it can safely do so in a specific enclosure and losing control of the cone, or unloading. When the subwoofer suspension reaches its limit, the subwoofer will stop moving momentarily, causing a buildup of heat on the coil(s). Or just pieces slapping together that shouldn't be can damage things, or pieces coming apart. 

When a subwoofer is clipping, it's receiving a clipped electrical signal from a source. That can be your head unit, LOC, EQ, DSP, amplifier, or anything really. Instead of the signal being a nice and rounded at its high and low peaks, it's flat. That causes the subwoofer to stop momentarily and the coils to heat up. So kind of the same dilemma, just different causes. 

2011 Chevy Silverado under construction

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1 hour ago, DeafYet said:

Thanks for the info, so my follow up question. So for my understanding then, when you clip I thought it was the sub bottoming out, creating a short, hence why coils would overheat. Short by bottoming out…. If it’s an electrical property, when the signal is clipped, what is it doing to the sub to make it heat up so fast?

Clipping refers to the tips of the sine wave literally being 'clipped' off because the signal/gain is being driven beyond what the power supply / voltage of the amplifier can supply

Distortion, Clipping, and Square Waves

Bottoming out is a different issue altogether. Too much power, too big of a box, too little port, playing below tuning, etc.


In either scenario: The reason for the extra heat is because in clipping, you're now sending DC voltage to a system designed for AC voltage. A current moving through a wire creates a magnetic field, and a wire moving through a magnetic field creates current. Your speaker is a wire moving through a magnetic field, and there's some interplay between those two properties. This is called inductance - it's why you have a DC resistance of the coils. But if you so much as breathe on it, you'll get wildly fluctuating readings. That's also the property that is responsible for 'rise' - or the frequency dependent variation in AC resistance presented by a particular driver/install.

Here's a graphic from the IM-SG owner's manual for clarification on what that looks like

image.png

Pushing beyond mechanical specification results in a similar behavior because the coil is leaving the magnetic field and becoming a simple resistor. No inductive feedback = more power than intended is being sent.

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