Levels and speaker damage?

[Coprosatanica]

This is probably a silly question, but I’m wondering if you guys have any input. I’ve heard that subtle audio clipping in amateur recordings that are boosted to achieve similar volume levels of production CDs can damage stereo speakers. I would assume that if I don’t hear any distortion, it should be ok – but perhaps there is more to it. Am I just being retarded, or have you guys actually seen speakers get fucked up from playing slightly overdriven CD’s??

I’ve been using Wavelab 4 to “master” some tracks for my friend’s band. They want it to be fairly loud, but I don’t want to risk damaging people’s speakers if this is a serious possibility. Any compression/leveling guidelines to follow with Wavelab would also be appreciated.

 

[Carrier Flux]

I've heard of this as well, and really don't know how much validity there is to it.

what you're really worried about is a waveform that has very rapid variation in sound levels, particularly in the low end, where your speaker has to move in and out more quickly than it can handle. distortion can make for a wave that has sharp edges (a square wave), which causes the speaker to go berzerk in trying to reproduce that material.

one thing I believe to be true is that solid state poweramp distortion will cause speaker damage because the resulting wave shape is too jagged. whether or not poorly mastered program material can have the same effect, I am unsure of.

my understanding of this is incredibly fuzzy, so I fully expect someone to chime in and make me look like an ass.

 

[Carrier Flux]

here you go. more crap than I can understand:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/archive/index.php/t-22115.html

these guys are talking about the plateau at the top of the squished wave (the square wave I was talking about) causing overheating in the tweeters since the speaker has to hold a steady position for a short period of time, disallowing the heat buildup on the coil to dissipate. dear god. have fun trying to figure out how much validity that thread really has

 

[Coprosatanica]

Hey thanks, yeah that is a lot of info!
This is interesting stuff though. I actually talked to a guy who does the audio analysis for Disk Faktory about this when I was having a CD dup'd a couple months ago. He stated that he EXPECTED a considerable degree of digital clipping, especially with metal music. Hmmm...



Edit -- This is a very interesting one on dynamic range history. Do you guys agree with the opinions voiced in this article??

http://www.cdmasteringservices.com/dynamicrange.htm

 

[006]

Well, you wouldn't expect a Mariah Carey cd to have clipping, would you? The damn music is set back in the mix and her voice is the dominant thing in there. For metal though...you have hi-gain guitars creating a thick wall, drums that are suppose to pound the shit out of your ears, and vocals that are deep and thick as well as a bass guitar that has to keep up with the guitars. It's fairly easy to keep from clipping, but like it's been said before, the trend these days for metal is the louder the better. There are sooooo many metal cd's out right now that clip. It's not even funny. Slap an L2 on it and call it day...

~006

 

[Coprosatanica]

Well, you wouldn't expect a Mariah Carey cd to have clipping, would you? The damn music is set back in the mix and her voice is the dominant thing in there. For metal though...you have hi-gain guitars creating a thick wall, drums that are suppose to pound the shit out of your ears, and vocals that are deep and thick as well as a bass guitar that has to keep up with the guitars. It's fairly easy to keep from clipping, but like it's been said before, the trend these days for metal is the louder the better. There are sooooo many metal cd's out right now that clip. It's not even funny. Slap an L2 on it and call it day...

~006

Yeah, good point! And if some kid's speakers take a shit because of clipping - he will probably blame Slipknot before he'd blame my buddy's garage band right?

 

[Omega_Void]

Another article on this...
http://sound.westhost.com/tweeters.htm

 

[xmarcelx]

BTW
"sharp edges (a square wave)" means much high frequency content ant it would kill more the tweeter than the bass speaker...