My Quad 21L's cracked when i turned my amp up

cameronl

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hi there all, last weekend when i was partying abit at home I decided to turn my amp up (Halo C2/Halo A52) to see how my 21L's handled it.

My A52 is rated at 125 watts though I hear it is closer to 175 when using just the 2 channels. I'd only turned it up to half when my speakers crackled. Suffice to say that I turned it down again before my speakers got damaged (and my ears!). I tried it once more with the same result.

Now, my 21l's are rated at 6 ohms with a max power of 200 watts so I thought they should be able to handle it?

btw; the sound was clear all the way up to the crackle.

Has anyone else turned there amp up and found there speakers crackle?

thanks

CaM
 
cameronl said:
hi there all, last weekend when i was partying abit at home I decided to turn my amp up (Halo C2/Halo A52) to see how my 21L's handled it.

Heavy bass music? It's possible the bass drivers were hitting their mechanical limits, providing a very similar effect to electrical clipping.

Be careful with power ratings: is that 200W "programme power" or RMS? RMS is the only thing worth considering. PMPO and other faked up measurements are totally worthless, as evidenced by multi-kilowatt computer speakers running off a wall wart adaptor.

Also, "turned halfway up" is meaningless. Your amp consists of two stages: a preamp with variable gain (the volume knob) feeding a power amp with fixed gain. Maximum power is achieved when the input to the power amp reaches a certain level. This level is dependent on both volume control position and input level, so the volume control position on its own means nothing.
 
You have just reached the limits of your speakers. Specifications and power ratings are meaningless, it's very dependent on what type of material you are playing. If you want to go louder then you need bigger speakers.
 
oh well, i thought as much :)

Quads for home cinema then...which gives me skope to get yet another stero/speakers set.

If only the Quad 22l's were actually anygood....

thanks for your replys all.

CaM
 
set them to small, add a big sub, and off you go again..it will go much louder - and probably be far better too!
 
I doubt very much whether they would sound any better with a sub. I'm using the bypass mode on my processer so this isn't and option and besides, they sound good to me anyway :)

I just wanted to know how loud they could really go and whether they were limited by my halo gear. In the end it is my halo gear which is limited by the Quads ;)

CaM
 
I have heard them twice (but never in a big room mind) and i've never felt truely impressed with them. Still, they were never driven by a combination as good as my halo setup so I can't truely be sure. They did sound very agile to me and the bass did seem quite boomy.

Have you heard them in ideal conditions? Getting them would be a great soulution....and my 21l's would go nicely with my 12l's in surround duty :)

CaM
 
ok, thanks for the info.

How far do you sit from them? Would a meter from the rear wall be ok?

CaM
 

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