How Far Can I Turn it Up?

well if it all goes quite then you have gone to far....

Mr. Jasonstry,
No, I hope I'm not divorced from reality.  I have fried speakers just for the fun of it, but generally, that involved a backyard barbecue and lots of beer.  Handing beer bottles over the fence kept the neighbors from getting too angry.  I've been out of this business for years, and I find, among other things, that by the time you factor in loss of efficiency due to long voice coils, increased power compression, and the trend towards smaller cabinets, things aren't much better than they were in the 70's and 80's, except that the amplifiers have much higher wattage.  Speaker-wise, things are better, but not by that much.  A trend I noticed then was long-term overloads ripped surrounds, and short-term overloads burned voice coils, but we didn't have as much control over signal bandwith, so drivers probably unloaded a lot more, then.  The difference between high SPL and higher SPL was a lot of watts, so we were aware of the concept of power compression.  There weren't multi-thousand watt drivers back then, but somehow we had high SPL.  So, my way of knowing if I can crank it up is I look at xmax (literally, I look at the drivers), I listen, and/or I use an RMS voltmeter on the speaker leads, since I don't have a power meter anymore.  If I turn it up, and ten minutes later it seems like it's not as loud as it was, I'm just making heat, so I back down between songs.  Once I've run a system a couple of times, I get a feel for it, and I find the meters on the equipment tell me enough.  That's fine, but I kind of start over every time I work with a new system.  As an aside, I should mention that a great many sound systems are operated nowhere near the point of component failure, and they operate for years, until someone who needs to learn good judgement comes along and fries something.

By the way, power compression was mentioned earlier in this thread.  The concept of decreasing gains is not restricted to loudspeakers.  It occurs in devices as far removed as pumps, electric motors, and diesel engines.

I recognise the vast amount of knowledge and expertise shown on this forum, but most everyone has learned all this stuff the hard way.  I still dislike telling someone new to the business that they are going to have to blow up stuff to learn when it's about to blow.  On the other side, I doubt that things will ever get to where you can go to a college, take classes, and come out with every bit of knowledge you need to manage a sound system.  I guess I was just hoping for more than what we apparently have.

In 1948, JBL came out with a speaker they called the D130.  That product, with minor changes, had a 50 year production run.  I don't think any other speaker has matched that record.  My understanding of the history is that the way they initially rated it was they played guitar through it, measure the watts, and turned it up until it blew, and then derated it from there.  There, we've re-played all the jokes posted about turning it up to 11 or 12. 

Regards,
Rotorbar

in my brief experience in the PA world i've blown 3 Fane xb's, 1 V18-1200 and 1 PD 186's, all from dubstep nights!
i do agree though, you'll never know how much is too much, until you've spanked a couple of drivers.
Happily i've not blown a driver for a while now!

Yet another bizarre thread. A speaker will break if you exceed its stated watts, as was said previously. Theres no need to make a model it is a simple fact.

Most music has a maxmium crest factor of about 6db in each band so if you buy and amp which is double the rated RMS of the drivers you are using there should be, in theory, around 3db of headroom. Ensure the amplifiers do not clip and you should keep all of your drivers intact. This is the way I have done it for years and its always worked (even with DNB DJs persisant redlining of mixers).

I'd say lets give it up.

There was no insult intended to all of you who have gained your experience the hard way.  My education was certainly expensive enough.  I'm getting older, and I find that teaching the younger folks is more important to me than showing off what I know (or more usually, don't know).  I just wanted to try to find a way to pass it on to the next generation. 

Mr. Jasonstry, there was no perceived attack or insult.

Mr. SDX
I think our posts got crossed.  I have no argument with your statements.