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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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Speaker Asylum General speaker questions for audio and home theater. |
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In Reply to: How do amps drive speakers? posted by George S. Roland on September 22, 2024 at 21:39:39:
Finally, a good question to answer. Unfortunately, it is complex and if you are not familiar with a speaker's specs aka Thiele/Small parameters it may be a little hard to understand. I am a speaker designer, not a teacher but I will do my best to answer.
An amplifier does not output a signal to pull the cone back to its original position an amplifier does contribute to cone control via dampening factor. To answer your question properly we need to first learn more about speakers and how they stop/dampen a cones movement.
First, we need to know the basics of how a speaker works. Whenever you have wire moving in a magnetic gap it will create electrical current. Do you have an old speaker and a voltmeter? Hook the voltmeter up to the speakers' terminals and set it to read DC voltage the voltmeter will read 0 volts DC now start pushing the cone down rapidly and you will see it generates DC voltage.
Now let's look at a speakers Qms this is the mechanical resistance of the suspension aka spider & surround the lower the Qms the stronger the suspension so the faster it is going to return to its original position this is called dampening a speaker with low Qms has more/higher dampening.
Qes is a speaker's electrical resistance/attenuation as the voice coil moves in the gap it creates opposing current this counteracts the flow of current from the amplifier and helps stop/dampen speaker cone movement. So, it is the combination of a speakers Qms & Qes working together to dampen/stop cone movement.
Qts is the total Q of a speaker so a speaker with low Qes,Qms will have a low Qts the lower the Q the higher the dampening the higher the dampening the faster and better the cone movement is controlled. Also, your amplifiers dampening factor also contributes to dampening/cone control.
This is why I always tell Audiophiles you must learn as much as possible if you want to put together a nice sounding system. things are not just plug and play everything is working together in an audio system things need to be matched to work together.
For example, say you have the opposite of a low Q speaker say you have speakers that have a high Q less dampened less cone control you do not want to hook them to a tube amp that has a very low dampening factor you will end up with slow muddy sounding bass. But if you have a Low Q highly dampened speaker and you hook them to a good amp with a high dampening factor you will have punchy tight articulate bass.
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Follow Ups
- RE: How do amps drive speakers? - seancuster71@gmail.com 15:34:51 10/02/24 (0)
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