Can subs distort

i was just wandering if subs can distort just like speakers, or weather is dosnt make a difference and it dosnt effect subs, or if you can just turn them up as much as you want?


help would b sweet

Well subs are nothing more than a large speaker driver...so to answer your question yes they can distort.

Anytime you are ending up with a different sound wave from what is on the original media...the sound has been distorted.

And no, you can't just turn subs up as much as you want...unless you are really good and then you're just pushing the limits until your subs blow out... lol


Oh...and since I see this question possibly popping up later in the thread I'll answer it now...

Q: How much power can I throw into (insert sub name) before it'll blow?
A: Power DOES NOT blow speakers...DISTORTION is what blows speakers. The only reason that people have been thinking that power blows speakers is because you have a smaller margin of error before the speaker gives out when you are working with a larger amount of power.


Hope that helps!

thanx man
your help is appreaciated

Q: How much power can I throw into (insert sub name) before it'll blow?
A: Power DOES NOT blow speakers...DISTORTION is what blows speakers. The only reason that people have been thinking that power blows speakers is because you have a smaller margin of error before the speaker gives out when you are working with a larger amount of power.


Hope that helps!

one word .... NO

POWER BLOWS SPEAKERS ...... end of story

the thing about distortion or clipping blowing speakers is an old wives tale, that dies just about as hard as running power and signal wires on opposite sides of the car.

one word .... NO

POWER BLOWS SPEAKERS ...... end of story

the thing about distortion or clipping blowing speakers is an old wives tale, that dies just about as hard as running power and signal wires on opposite sides of the car.


Well you can have your opinion and I'll have mine...

All I know is that I've seen a lot more people blow subs because of a shitty clipping deck than because they had too big of an amplifier(AKA:My two Memphis MC-1500D's on two JL 12w6v2's)...and I've seen a lot of people do fine with high powered setups while the guy maxing out his amp is destroying subs left and right...

Whatever you want to think...

How the speaker blows is not an opinion at all. There has to be a fact that something happened, and it happened to be that power blows speakers. When you clip an amp, the amp is really sending at least twice the amount of "clean" power it can put out, and if the sub cannot handle the power, it'll blow.

I can put a 100w amp and clip it all day long on my RE SE, but that clipping will still not blow the subwoofer. The subwoofer can take up to ~1500w on test tones all day long. For burps, they can take and upwards of 3kw.

People sometimes get mixed up in how things work. Kind of like how people think bigger subs are "sloppy", when in fact they aren't. They get the idea because the boxes are too small to start out with. Then they blame it on the subwoofer.

no opinion involved ... just the facts sir. When you clip an amp heavily, it can produce like 3 times it's average power. If you are familiar with calculus integrals, then when you look at the graph of heavy clipping you will see that the area under the curve (the part where the speaker is actively being powered by the amp) is greatly inceased. Basically, the poor speaker never gets a rest and just wears out from over heating.

all speakers including subs can distort. and all speakers can be blown. speakers are damaged more from under powering them than by over powering them. if you'r amp is all the way up then you proubly do not have enough power and this causes the voice coils to heat up and melt.thus blowing the speaker. on the same hand if you run 500 watts to a 200 watt speaker it will blow also. i would rather have to much power and keep the gains down on my amps then to little power and have every thing run hot