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Re: Altec 806A - First Order Crossover - - 1K5 values? - higher order highpass? notch width?

Posted by Tom Dawson (A) on May 28, 2005 at 21:01:25

In Reply to: Re: Altec 806A - First Order Crossover - - 1K5 values? - higher order highpass? notch width? posted by freddyi on May 28, 2005 at 19:27:04:

in practise - what factors really stress & fry most compression drivers? - (currently running transform on 2-way - all run from one amp)

Well, here's my general set of assumptions, and I'm not nearly as much of an expert in practice on compression drivers & horns as some in this forum.

Based on the idea that compression driver failure (or compromised performance at least) is based on two factors: excessive excursion and power dissipation:

Where the horn effectively is completely unloading the driver, below that frequency, the -30 db atten rule applies to keep excursion from being excessive for a power amp up to 1000W, no step down xfmr. (& assuming a driver that can dissipate 1W or more DC indefinitely - I think most competent ones can, rather easily.)

There is also the idea that I once read that for music in general, the highest energy band is around 150 hz, so that would be good frequency for the maximum attenuation using a notch type quasi first order filter. This happens to work pretty well with the lowish xover points I'm using with the Iron Lawbreakers and BB's. Put the notch there, and boom, I'm set from 300 hz to 600 hz xover at least.

If you're stepping down w/a transformer, then the maximum voltage that could be applied to the driver with a given amp drops as the square root of the impedance ratio.

FWIW, that's my take. If someone wants to further enlighten me, I'm all 'ears'.

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