And so it came to pass, on 11-03-96 13:09,
   that KERRY CHUN spake unto MATT ION:
->> During this period, the speaker is being fed 20V of pure DC power.
->> There will be some mechanical damage caused by the speaker being
 KC> ----------->8  more explanation deleted  8<-----------
 KC> Your explanation talks about dc power being the products of the
 KC> overdriven amp.  Actually, the speaker crossover will send the dc
 KC> and low-frequency components of the signal to the woofer, which is
 KC> able to handle fairly large amounts of power.  The more common
 KC> cause of speaker damage is to the tweeters.  When an amplifier is
 KC> driven past clipping, the output approaches a square wave.  
This is true -- I'm afraid I oversimplified my explanation a bit.  A clipped 
signal is not pure DC, but contains a *lot* of high-frequency harmonics, 
which at a certain point start to look like DC.  Driven to an extreme, this 
tends to be pretty damaging to ALL speaker components.
 KC> The ferro-fluid that Acoustic Research introduced in the mid-70s
 KC> has helped tweeter handling capacity, but not yet enough.
Yes, mainly because it conducts heat away from the coils more readily than 
does air.
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Love, luck, and lollipops...
Matt


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