Clipping on newer amps does that have any relevance to the speakers?

[jgi420]

Now I'm not sure how's this works but a lot of new amplifiers have clip lights now I guess my question is If a speaker or a subwoofer is being overpowered does the clip light come on or does it only come on due to distortion. 

 

Are these new amps capable of sensing when a speaker is being overpowered to help prevent you from blowing them up. 

 

I know in the old days amps had protection lights which would come on if the amp was overheating or something. Now I know that's different.

 

But has car audio really evolved to the point where the clip light could be an indicator of a system being overpowered.

 

I'm just wondering and the reason why I asked because I recently upgraded to newer more powerful speakers and a better box and I'm just wondering if my amp is going to clip at the same level of gain?

 

I just hooked everything up and got it installed and I have not adjusted anything or ran any test tones yet. So I was kind of just wondering if I was going to be able to adjust the gain higher or lower. 

 

I'm kind of curious if I was not getting to use the full power of the amp with my previous setup.

Edited January 13 by jgi420

[Joe X]

You can overpower a sub without clipping and yo can get a sub blown without any clipping, The thing is that a clipped signal contains significantly more energy than it's undistorted counterpart so you have to avoid clipping at all costs.

 

The amplifier can't tell if you are overpowering a driver, the clipping light just means that the amplifier is generating  clipping distortion even if you can't hear it and that has nothing to do with the sub.

 

[jgi420]

Okay, thanks for the information I wasn't sure on that. So yeah I'll keep that in mind for future reference