On May 4, 3:31 pm, luvpoc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> Hi, I just started reading Daniel Levitin's book, "This is Your Brain
> on Music" and in the introduction he says that in his college days he
> listened to music at such high volumes that: "I actually set my
> loudspeakers on fire by cranking the volume too high." Is this
> hyperbole, or can this really happen? Has anybody here ever
> experienced this?
The short answer is no, it can't happen.
The long answer is still no.
I have, for a variety of clients, done extreme stress testing
of loudspeakers to the point of irrecoverable failure under
a wide variety of circumstances. I have driven voice coils
to the point of melting the attached domes, to beyond the
point of boiling the ferrofluid out of the gap, and so on.
In THOUSANDS of cases, there does not exist a single
case of ANY of them coming remotely close to catching
fire. In all cases, the electrical system simply opened
up first.
There was once a high-end store in Harvard Square
which had a pair of EPI 100 speakers where the center
of the cone was charred and burned through, and the
store's claim was that their McIntosh amplifiers were
so powerful that they set the speakers on fire. A friend
bought the speakers for $5 as a curiosity and brought
them buy. The burn pattern was VERY curious, indeed.
While the cone was indeed burned, as in fire, the voice
coil itself was perfectly intact and had NO signs of
ANY thermal stress whatsoever. Further, the speakers
had their grills, and there was no sign of soot or ash
in the backside of the grill cloth, even thoughthe cones
were extensively damaged.
The conclusion was simple: the single case that I was
able to examine where there was visual evidence of a
fire was deliberately burned with a torch as a sales
gimmick.
The reasons it can't happen are many. In most cases,
the voice coil or the solder joints for the flex leads or
the power supply caps give up LONG before there's
enough heat generated to raise the temperature to
the ignition point of the cone. The voice coil is buried
in a steel structure that conducts a LOT of the heat
away. The speakers at that point are sounding SO
awful by being so several overdriven that they are
beyond intolerable to listen to. And so on.
It's urban legend, short and sweet.
Now, you want STUPID loud? I once knew a kid
who would brag about the fact that he would take
his Phase Linear 700 and hook it to his Bose 901's
and set them up almost like giant headphones
and play it SO loud his ears would bleed. He
though it was WAY cool.
I met him about 5-8 years later and he was a sorry
young man in his mid 20's who was almost completely
deaf.
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