What sounds are the worst for speaker damage?

Question

I was wondering what sounds are the worst for damaging a speaker. Would it be low frequency, high frequency, glass shattering sound, gun shots sound.... Etc etc

Answer 1

square wave

Answer 2

A professor once said that pure tones (I'm assuming at high volumes) are bad for speakers, and he also said that ultra-low tones at high volumes over speakers that can reproduce them are bad for the human body.



He also discharged a capacitor with a considerable charge using a screwdriver, and melted a very small part of the screwdriver in the process to make a point to someone, so I assume he wasn't lying intentionally.

Answer 3

Test recordings often included jet fly bys explosions, pure test tones, for level adjustments, so forth. I assume they still do. Most all included a warning of some type about setting initial volumes too high. I assume they still do. If you are looking for some magic sauce to destroy someones equipment with, you are out of luck. It gets destroyed by doing things you shouldn't, bad care, and mechanical damage. Or, old age.

Answer 4

Well first thing to understand is most damage to speakers occurs when you overdrive the amplifier into distortion sending a distorted signal to the speakers. Granted you can damage speakers with to much power as well but is much harder to do. As to what sounds are more likely to damage speakers. dynamic sounds are the most likely explosions for example, simply high energy sounds. The voice coils in conventional cone speakers can get excessively hot ( if not cooled or protected ) can become burnt or chard reducing the gap between the voice coil and cone of the driver permanently damaging the driver.

Answer 5

Basically any sound played too loud that forces the speaker cone and diaphram to move beyond its designed limit will damage a speaker.



If the speakers are driven too hard any sound can damage them.

Answer 6

Low frequency or bass sounds.



The woofer is the largest motor in your speaker system. Unlike a spinning motor the speaker draws power to start moving - and draws power to reverse. If you crank the volume and your amp cannot totally control the woofer, it slams into it's mechanical limits. This can damage the woofer after a while.

Answer 7

The content of the material played

has little or nothing to do with the occurrence of damage.



In other words, excessive applied voltage (thus power)

and/or clipping is all the same to a speaker.







Think of it in terms of crashing your car into

a brick wall, a concrete wall, or a steel wall.



If the speed is the same,

the damage to the car --- and to you ---

will be the same no matter which wall you hit.

Answer 8

Glass shattering sounds

Answer 9

In a word, distortion. The most frequent case of killer distortion is driving the amp too hard, which is what causes an amp to produce high distortion, and such signals will cause a speaker driver to try to reproduce the tones, with usually fatal results.

Answer 10

I think it's Bono trying to sing. I hate his voice