Originally Posted by
mikeyt
I was reading some forums and watching some videos of guys who were throwing excessive power at some subs. Now mind you these were competition monster SPL pounding subwoofers so I wouldn't doubt they are built to be abused, however even they have limits. One guy was driving a 2500 watt rms sub with a 5k rms amp running at 95% he said. So that's 4500 watts ground pounding the heck out of the speaker and it was devastating IMO, and I know that's going to eventually burn up. However, I've seen different things to say that a subwoofer, not sure about coaxes or anything else, that is a quality product, not some Dollar Store special, has a built in safety factor for this purpose of approximately 15-20%. Not sure how true that is, so that's why I ask. For example sake let's take a JL Audio 10TW1-2 rated at 300 watts rms, and it will be driven by an amp at 2 ohms that puts out 600 watts rms. I'm using this shallow mount as an example for someone trying to get more output out of a confined space with only being able to use one driver. If you were to dial that in mathematically at 360 watts rms (20%) over powered would the speaker be fine, do manufacturers build in a safety factor for this? I understand rms is approximately 80% of max power, however as I understand it, max power is peaked at resonant frequency for a brief period of time and isn't sustainable consistently. I could be wrong, which I probably am...lol