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What happens to frequencies less than rated range?


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I have a Sony receiver, you can set the 'size' of the speakers.

'Large' speakers get full-range.

'small' speakers can have a crossover frequency assigned, a built in hi-pass.

Maybe yours has something similar?

Got the manual?

 

Sorry, TL;DR most of the thread. 😉

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Exactly that does the newer generation of amps like the Bluesound Powernode. It is just an example I am not a rep of this brand. At the moment you dial in a sub the main speaker gets a low cut which frequency you can chose. If you use a normal receiver plus a sub you have to take into account that the main speaker gets full spectrum of the bass region. As long as you listen to normal SPL nothing should go wrong. As mentioned before in this thread a passive low cut could make things more complicated concerning impulse, phase shift, negative influences to the higher frequencies an so on.

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9 minutes ago, DirtyErnie said:

I have a Sony receiver, you can set the 'size' of the speakers.

'Large' speakers get full-range.

'small' speakers can have a crossover frequency assigned, a built in hi-pass.

Maybe yours has something similar?

Got the manual?

 

Sorry, TL;DR most of the thread. 😉

Im guessing that is a AV receiver. I looked through the manual and searched online it looks like there is no way to do it. It does attenuate any signals above 90hz that get sent to the 'sub-out', but it looks like I will be stuck with the RP-600Ms getting full range signals. 

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12 hours ago, psykoticboss said:

Im guessing that is a AV receiver. I looked through the manual and searched online it looks like there is no way to do it. It does attenuate any signals above 90hz that get sent to the 'sub-out', but it looks like I will be stuck with the RP-600Ms getting full range signals. 

 

Don’t worry about it.  Most speakers operate full-range, and many of them can’t reproduce the very low bass notes, or the very high treble notes.  I think you may be confusing signal with power.  Imagine that a signal is sent to a speaker, but it’s outside of the frequency range that the speaker can reproduce.  It’s kind of like a music score being given to a musician, but there was a mixup, and he got the music for the string bass, while he plays the piccolo.  He just can’t play it.  In other words, nothing happens to the speaker.  For another example, the tiny speakers on a smartphone or an iPad aren’t able to play bass notes, but you can turn up the volume as high as you like, without causing any damage.

 

In extreme cases, some heating of the voice coil may occur, but instances of inattentive music fans turning up the volume so high that the speakers eventually catch fire are extremely rare.  Have you ever heard of it happening?

 

With my stereo, 1000 watts are available to each speaker, which are Klipsch La Scalas.  Available is the key word.  It’s not like the power amps are putting out their full power whenever they’re turned up.  The La Scalas are rated for 100 watts max for continuous sound, and 400 watts max for peak (momentary) sounds.  La Scalas don’t produce useful sound below about 50 Hz.  When I’m listening to bass-heavy music, like by Billie Eilish, even at high volume, no harm comes to the speakers.  I have subs running as well, but that’s separate from the main speakers.  Another point is that Klipsch speakers are so efficient that they’re normally using very little power anyway.  With the big Heritage Series speakers, they can produce volume levels that will send you out of the room while they are barely using any power, only a handful of watts.  The only danger is from someone who is so out of it that they’re functionally deaf.  If they decide to “see how loud this thing will go”, they could cause some damage, to their ears and to the speakers.  This only applies to drastically overpowered systems, like mine and some others.  With more typical systems, this is not a factor.

 

Why is so much power useful?  Well, I like those amplifiers a lot, but they only came in one model.  That one model was designed to drive any speaker they were connected to, no matter how inefficient they might be.  Very few speakers are as efficient as most Klipsch speakers.  Some need a lot of power before they start sounding good.  These amplifiers sound great; they can let any speakers accurately reproduce drumbeats and other transient sounds, so that it can sometimes sound like a real drummer is playing in front of me.  To be honest, I only turned the volume up that high once or twice.  It hurt my ears!

 

Happy listening to your Klipsch speakers, and welcome to the Forum!

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On 7/5/2021 at 7:40 AM, Islander said:

 

Don’t worry about it.  Most speakers operate full-range, and many of them can’t reproduce the very low bass notes, or the very high treble notes.  I think you may be confusing signal with power.  Imagine that a signal is sent to a speaker, but it’s outside of the frequency range that the speaker can reproduce.  It’s kind of like a music score being given to a musician, but there was a mixup, and he got the music for the string bass, while he plays the piccolo.  He just can’t play it.  In other words, nothing happens to the speaker.  For another example, the tiny speakers on a smartphone or an iPad aren’t able to play bass notes, but you can turn up the volume as high as you like, without causing any damage.

 

In extreme cases, some heating of the voice coil may occur, but instances of inattentive music fans turning up the volume so high that the speakers eventually catch fire are extremely rare.  Have you ever heard of it happening?

 

With my stereo, 1000 watts are available to each speaker, which are Klipsch La Scalas.  Available is the key word.  It’s not like the power amps are putting out their full power whenever they’re turned up.  The La Scalas are rated for 100 watts max for continuous sound, and 400 watts max for peak (momentary) sounds.  La Scalas don’t produce useful sound below about 50 Hz.  When I’m listening to bass-heavy music, like by Billie Eilish, even at high volume, no harm comes to the speakers.  I have subs running as well, but that’s separate from the main speakers.  Another point is that Klipsch speakers are so efficient that they’re normally using very little power anyway.  With the big Heritage Series speakers, they can produce volume levels that will send you out of the room while they are barely using any power, only a handful of watts.  The only danger is from someone who is so out of it that they’re functionally deaf.  If they decide to “see how loud this thing will go”, they could cause some damage, to their ears and to the speakers.  This only applies to drastically overpowered systems, like mine and some others.  With more typical systems, this is not a factor.

 

Why is so much power useful?  Well, I like those amplifiers a lot, but they only came in one model.  That one model was designed to drive any speaker they were connected to, no matter how inefficient they might be.  Very few speakers are as efficient as most Klipsch speakers.  Some need a lot of power before they start sounding good.  These amplifiers sound great; they can let any speakers accurately reproduce drumbeats and other transient sounds, so that it can sometimes sound like a real drummer is playing in front of me.  To be honest, I only turned the volume up that high once or twice.  It hurt my ears!

 

Happy listening to your Klipsch speakers, and welcome to the Forum!

1000 watts per channel! Holy cow. I am not going to worry about it. Once the sub gets in I am going to dedicate some listening time where I really turn them up and have fun with them. And not to any levels where I will have hearing damage. Just nice and loud. Thanks for your input and sharing your system. I have not heard of the La Scalas but I am going to look them up!

 

Check out bassnectar sometime! My favorite artist although hes been involved with some drama lately. What artist hasn't. His bass music however is top notch. Listen to divergent spectrum and freestyle albums. 

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1 minute ago, psykoticboss said:

1000 watts per channel! Holy cow. I am not going to worry about it. Once the sub gets in I am going to dedicate some listening time where I really turn them up and have fun with them. And not to any levels where I will have hearing damage. Just nice and loud. Thanks for your input and sharing your system. I have not heard of the La Scalas but I am going to look them up!

 

Check out bassnectar sometime! My favorite artist although hes been involved with some drama lately. What artist hasn't. His bass music however is top notch. Listen to divergent spectrum and freestyle albums. 

 

Thanks for the tips.  I’ll check them out when I get a chance.  Have you heard Garbage?  They’re an American band, with a Scottish singer, Shirley Manson.  Their best CD is Version 2.0.  Nearly every song on there is great, and there’s lots of bottom end.

 

As for your sub, when you adjust its hi-cut (the point where its highest frequency will roll off), check the specs for your speakers, especially their lowest frequency, and set the sub to a point at least 20-30 Hz higher.  This is because the speakers don’t cut off exactly at that point.  Instead, the sound sort of tapers off.  In the same way, the subwoofer tapers off at its top end.  Because of that, you need some overlap to get a smooth handover from from speakers to sub, and going the other way, too.  That’s how you get an even frequency response, from lowest bass to highest treble, with as few dips and peaks as possible.

 

Let us know how it goes when you get your sub and get it dialled in.

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On 7/5/2021 at 10:53 AM, Shiva said:

Another question might be, what happens when you overdrive a speaker?  Sometimes, a bit of humor and smoke, plus a youtube channel that makes money. This kid has 91K subscribers.

 

 

 

He is pretty tough on speakers.

JJK

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I'm gonna say "yes" to the OP's question, do they have to worry about low freqs below the low freq cutoff of the speaker damaging it.

 

If the amp is delivering a full range signal to the speakers and the speakers have no built-in high pass filter, they WILL try to reproduce the low freqs. At louder volumes, speaker damage will occur.

 

I did just that to a pair of bookshelf speakers with a 50Hz low end limit. I was playing bass-centric music with low frequency sweeps and such. I over-drove the speaker and the glue bond between the spider and the cone failed. Buzzzzt!

 

Parts Express sells pre-fab high pass filters you can put in-line to protect your speakers. I did just that for my Heresy's. I bought the filters closest to the Heresy's low end limit, put them in a small project box with input/output leads and run the low frequencies through a subwoofer.

High Pass Filter.jpeg

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23 hours ago, Islander said:

 

Thanks for the tips.  I’ll check them out when I get a chance.  Have you heard Garbage?  They’re an American band, with a Scottish singer, Shirley Manson.  Their best CD is Version 2.0.  Nearly every song on there is great, and there’s lots of bottom end.

 

As for your sub, when you adjust its hi-cut (the point where its highest frequency will roll off), check the specs for your speakers, especially their lowest frequency, and set the sub to a point at least 20-30 Hz higher.  This is because the speakers don’t cut off exactly at that point.  Instead, the sound sort of tapers off.  In the same way, the subwoofer tapers off at its top end.  Because of that, you need some overlap to get a smooth handover from from speakers to sub, and going the other way, too.  That’s how you get an even frequency response, from lowest bass to highest treble, with as few dips and peaks as possible.

 

Let us know how it goes when you get your sub and get it dialled in.

Thanks for the tips. I will definitely add that whole album and give it a listen through tomorrow. 

 

The RP-600Ms allegedly go from 45hz+, so I am thinking about setting the sub to 80hz. I would like for it to do as much work as possible. Even though the 600s will be playing full range, I am hoping the sub volume will still be the main player in the low-mid/low region.

 

Will update once it gets here, about 2 more weeks since its coming freight! Super excited :)

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6 hours ago, Peter P. said:

I'm gonna say "yes" to the OP's question, do they have to worry about low freqs below the low freq cutoff of the speaker damaging it.

 

If the amp is delivering a full range signal to the speakers and the speakers have no built-in high pass filter, they WILL try to reproduce the low freqs. At louder volumes, speaker damage will occur.

 

I did just that to a pair of bookshelf speakers with a 50Hz low end limit. I was playing bass-centric music with low frequency sweeps and such. I over-drove the speaker and the glue bond between the spider and the cone failed. Buzzzzt!

 

Parts Express sells pre-fab high pass filters you can put in-line to protect your speakers. I did just that for my Heresy's. I bought the filters closest to the Heresy's low end limit, put them in a small project box with input/output leads and run the low frequencies through a subwoofer.

 

Man I have gotten equal amount of nothing to worry about and yes worry about it. I do plan on playing alot of bass music, EDM, hip-hop, etc...so I wonder if this filter is worth it or if I truely have nothing to worry about. I will be playing them loud but not insanely ear damaging loud. They are the RP-600Ms. Why wouldn't they add in a high pass filter to the speaker if they know it can only produce down to 45hz...

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6 hours ago, Peter P. said:

I'm gonna say "yes" to the OP's question, do they have to worry about low freqs below the low freq cutoff of the speaker damaging it.

 

If the amp is delivering a full range signal to the speakers and the speakers have no built-in high pass filter, they WILL try to reproduce the low freqs. At louder volumes, speaker damage will occur.

 

I did just that to a pair of bookshelf speakers with a 50Hz low end limit. I was playing bass-centric music with low frequency sweeps and such. I over-drove the speaker and the glue bond between the spider and the cone failed. Buzzzzt!

 

Parts Express sells pre-fab high pass filters you can put in-line to protect your speakers. I did just that for my Heresy's. I bought the filters closest to the Heresy's low end limit, put them in a small project box with input/output leads and run the low frequencies through a subwoofer.

 

I was checking out the website. Some users say it affects the fidelity quite a bit for the frequencies that are preserved..have you noticed that at all? Otherwise it seems like a good solution but I wouldn't want the sound quality affected..also there may be a high pass filter built into the RP-600Ms...it makes no sense why there wouldn't be unless Klipsch was skimping on costs..but that does not seem to be a concern with the 600s. Waiting to hear back from support. 

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6 hours ago, psykoticboss said:

I was checking out the website. Some users say it affects the fidelity quite a bit for the frequencies that are preserved..have you noticed that at all? Otherwise it seems like a good solution but I wouldn't want the sound quality affected..also there may be a high pass filter built into the RP-600Ms...it makes no sense why there wouldn't be unless Klipsch was skimping on costs..but that does not seem to be a concern with the 600s. Waiting to hear back from support. 

I notice NO affect on the performance of my Heresy's, at any volume.

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On 7/4/2021 at 12:42 AM, MeloManiac said:

This thread is interesting:

All speakers can reproduce down to 1Hz. All that will happen is that you won't hear it. You'll literally see the driver moving one time per second and that'll be it. It's not damaging for this to happen.

However, when a speaker tries to reproduce a broader bandwidth than it's ideally suited for you get inaccuracies in that reproduction, known as distortion. The driver either isn't going to be fast enough or it's not going to move enough air for you to hear it. So we filter out what's not necessary for the driver to produce anyway, so what it does produce comes through with less distortion due to the driver not trying to do more than necessary.

Limiting the power to a speaker is another issue altogether and it has to do with how much the speaker can move without damaging itself.

https://gearspace.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/747517-what-happens-when-you-feed-speaker-signal-goes-beyond-its-frequency-range.html

 

So the 'filter' (or crossover) is basically filtering out the frequencies and energy that would otherwise damage the woofer.

This is, I guess, why you have to respect the specs of the capacitors, when you 'recap' old speakers (which I did with my 1972 Heresies).

 

I agree (about it being interesting)

 

I don't recall if it was a test CD or what....  but I once had something on that went down to (no idea) let's just call it 1 hz.

 

You could hear the woofer flop flop flopping.  No sound per se, just the physical movement of the driver going back/forth.

 

The flop flop flopping got a bit faster and sounded like faster flopping (the frequencies were slowly going up)

 

This continued when all the sudden, the driver began to engage with the air and started actually PUSHING some air and now, having a 'sound' verses the mechanical sound of the driver flopping.

 

As the frequency continued to rise, this very low thrum became "bass" then midbass and kind of dissipated as the sound got above the crossover point to hand the sound over to the midrange/tweeter section.

 

 

 

 

 

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34 minutes ago, Coytee said:

 

I agree (about it being interesting)

 

I don't recall if it was a test CD or what....  but I once had something on that went down to (no idea) let's just call it 1 hz.

 

You could hear the woofer flop flop flopping.  No sound per se, just the physical movement of the driver going back/forth.

 

The flop flop flopping got a bit faster and sounded like faster flopping (the frequencies were slowly going up)

 

This continued when all the sudden, the driver began to engage with the air and started actually PUSHING some air and now, having a 'sound' verses the mechanical sound of the driver flopping.

 

As the frequency continued to rise, this very low thrum became "bass" then midbass and kind of dissipated as the sound got above the crossover point to hand the sound over to the midrange/tweeter section.

 

 

 

 

 

I've never done this but it is a great description of what you know must be happening - the low frequency energy that is put onto the speaker has to go somewhere. This should alarm no one, low frequency tones, pre-subwoofer. have always gone into the main speaker, they simply do not make sound. The energy is dissipated as ineffective mechanical motion or heat. Yes a kid with a 1200 watt stereo can fry speakers, but you probably will not unless you do something really extreme. That ineffective flopping will cause IMD if other frequencies are present, I have no idea how audible it may be.

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20 hours ago, psykoticboss said:

Man I have gotten equal amount of nothing to worry about and yes worry about it.

 

I do plan on playing alot of bass music, EDM, hip-hop, etc...so I wonder if this filter is worth it or if I truely have nothing to worry about. I will be playing them loud but not insanely ear damaging loud. They are the RP-600Ms. Why wouldn't they add in a high pass filter to the speaker if they know it can only produce down to 45hz...

 

Your original question was "what happens to unwanted frequencies?"  The crossover converts the unwanted signal into heat where it's dissipated. 

+++

 

I have the RP-600M.  They work very well in 2.0 as-is with a nice full range sound.  The crossover is designed to prevent the speakers playing so low that the signal could damage the woofers.  Play them loud and proud, I think you'll like what you hear.

 

If you really want a nice sound for your EDM and other LF music pick up a subwoofer.  I run mine in a 2.1 with an inexpensive Paradigm 10" sub, 250 watts.  It's tremendous.  You don't hear the sound from the sub but from the speakers.  I use a simple 100 wpc mini-amp through my computer setup.  If you want more then get a 12" or 15" sub.  For your EDM type music, a bigger sub is better but don't be fooled, a ten inch sub sounds great with plenty of chest thump.

 

That's the 100 wpc mini amp/DAC on the far right of the first picture, displaying OPE, the SPDIF connection.  Computer SPDIF -> mini-amp -> sub via high level inputs -> RP-600M via high level inputs

 

IMG_0388_small.jpg

 

IMG_0393_small.jpg

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3 hours ago, wvu80 said:

 

Your original question was "what happens to unwanted frequencies?"  The crossover converts the unwanted signal into heat where it's dissipated. 

+++

 

I have the RP-600M.  They work very well in 2.0 as-is with a nice full range sound.  The crossover is designed to prevent the speakers playing so low that the signal could damage the woofers.  Play them loud and proud, I think you'll like what you hear.

 

If you really want a nice sound for your EDM and other LF music pick up a subwoofer.  I run mine in a 2.1 with an inexpensive Paradigm 10" sub, 250 watts.  It's tremendous.  You don't hear the sound from the sub but from the speakers.  I use a simple 100 wpc mini-amp through my computer setup.  If you want more then get a 12" or 15" sub.  For your EDM type music, a bigger sub is better but don't be fooled, a ten inch sub sounds great with plenty of chest thump.

 

That's the 100 wpc mini amp/DAC on the far right of the first picture, displaying OPE, the SPDIF connection.  Computer SPDIF -> mini-amp -> sub via high level inputs -> RP-600M via high level inputs

 

 

Thank you for the input man....I am leaning towards keeping the setup and not trading it in for one with crossover. I just don't want to damage the woofers is my main concern. I am not so much a hi-fi head where i couldn't deal with a little distortion. I guess my main question at this point is it worth it to send back the Yamaha S-501 to get a receiver with crossover abilities. If it's not then the Yamaha is a killer amp. I do have a HSU 15" sub on the way I am super excited for. 

 

By the way you have a cool little setup going there. Looks like a great place to kick back. I bet we are similar in that we like to browse the web and have a game going at the same time. Keeps the attention satisfied. I have 20 more days free returns to decide on the receiver...decisions, decisions..you think the woofers will get damaged if I play them 7/10 loud with heavy bass music? Keep in mind my tastes are bassnectar, tool, bass based EDM, etc....

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51 minutes ago, psykoticboss said:

is it worth it to send back the Yamaha S-501 to get a receiver with crossover abilities. If it's not then the Yamaha is a killer amp. I do have a HSU 15" sub on the way

 

Get an AV (home theater) receiver (they are sometimes called AVRs) and cross over from sub to main at 80 Hz.  Then you can relax. 

Since you tend toward being a bass-head, run your 15 inch sub few dB "hot," and consider putting it very near a corner.  Your new receiver should be about 100 watts per channel; I assume the HSU has its own good amp built in to it.  Which HSU (a good brand) are you getting?

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