Phil Jones, der bekannte Konstrukteur von Speakern, gefalteten Horn-Boxen und Amps mit ein paar Tatsachen zum Thema "Verstärkerleistung und Speakon".
Viel Spaß beim Lesen.
A few words on Speakon Connectors and speaker cables for bass players.
I just want to help all my friends here understand what is required on getting the best from your amps!
When I started my own sound reinforcement company in London 1980 and I was one of the first in the world to design and use Subwoofers (Multiple 2 x JBL K151s 18inchers on17 foot long folded hyperbolic horns) for live sound , there really weren't any standards as to what to use for high power speaker connectors, In this age the standard PA power amp was the Crown DC300. The power by today's specs are very lame at 155watts per ch into 8 ohms but it became an industry standard and it was not uncommon to have 50 or more of these to power a rig. The problem was that nobody had figured out what to do about a reliable speaker connector. Quarter inch jacks having only a current rating of one amp were out , unless you wanted a small pyrotechnic display behind your speakers, so many of us back then opted for the XLR but if you made a mistake hooking up cables you could get real problems. I found out that yes, SM58s do make sound when they are driven by a power amp , if only for a second before they evaporated up into smoke. I often needed a crew of 6-10 guys setting up my rig and operating it and sometimes a newbie would come along and POOF! There goes another microphone or DI box. The weirdest thing that happened is once setting up a rig we powered the system up with no microphones yet connected and I was getting feedback. Only to find out that one bass bin had been connected to one of the power amplifiers input and was working like a giant microphone!
In the concert sound industry as amplifier power was greatly increasing thanks to advancements in semiconductor technology , it became more economic to employ less efficient vented bass cabinets over the costly to produce cinema based design horn speakers. It was just less expensive to make a vented box and use more of them with more powerful and affordable power amps. The most expensive component of a bass horn was the horn cab itself and years of getting trucked around mean they would ultimately get destroyed, where as the speaker units can almost go on forever. So keep the speakers and replace the cabs occasionally was a more profitable choice.
So the late 80s, the Neutrik Company of Lichtenstein ( a tiny county in Europe for those of you who are in USA ) developed a new industry standard for high power audio connectors; the Speakon connector. As power amplifiers got more powerful and it was now possible to get electrocuted from the speaker terminals (some amps can swing over 100 volts with huge current and its the current that fries you. So safety of protecting users became a big issue and Speakon connectors are safely insulated from any possibility of electric shock. The "new" connector killed any confusion as what would be hooked up to power amps. And lastly they had the current capacity to handle huge currents from amplifiers for the more affordable , power hungry and less efficient vented bass enclosures now being used in pro-audio sound reinforcement.
Bass players today need far more power to get level and tone to keep up with guitar amps and loud drummers. The reason is simple: bass speaker have to move a lot of air and that calls for a specially developed speaker that has high cone excursion capabilities with low distortion. This can only be economically achieved by using what is known as an over hung voice coil. That means that the coil is longer than the magnetic field and if you want very little distortion this is the ONLY way to get that at a reasonable cost.
In short over hung voice coils trade off speaker efficiency for good bass. So while a 100 watt tube guitar amp flat out level will make your ears almost bleed. To get a bass amp to keep up you need about 1000 watts. The frustrating fact is that guitar speakers are just way more efficient ( some can be 103db/watt) than bass speakers because they dont need such a huge overhang on the voice coil.
So if you had a 1000 watt bass head to keep up with your head banger of a guitarist this is what you need to know because it will help you get the best from your amp.
Say, if you had a 4 ohm speaker, then in order to get a 1000 watts, you amp will give out 63 volts and push 16 amps of current through your speaker cables. A 1/4 inch jack plug is rated at 1 amp so you would be exceeding its max limit by a factor of 16!!!
It is also very important that the speaker cable is of extremely low resistance if you want the full power of your amp going to the speakers. A typical low quality speaker cable could easily be almost half an ohm in resistance (or more) and that would mean that over 100 watts could easily be lost in the cable and that is also frequency specific too! I just wanted to explain this very, and I mean very simply so anyone can grasp this. In fact loudspeaker to amplifier interface is anything but simple and those who have read my earlier posts on speaker impedance will know what I mean.
When I developed PJB speaker cables I did this because there just was not anything like the quality I was looking for on the market. Not only do they ensure that every single watt from your amp gets to your speakers, they will greatly improve your sound giving you more controlled tighter and deeper bass, not to forget the incredible mid and high frequency detail, well that is if you have PJB speakers.
Viel Spaß beim Lesen.
A few words on Speakon Connectors and speaker cables for bass players.
I just want to help all my friends here understand what is required on getting the best from your amps!
When I started my own sound reinforcement company in London 1980 and I was one of the first in the world to design and use Subwoofers (Multiple 2 x JBL K151s 18inchers on17 foot long folded hyperbolic horns) for live sound , there really weren't any standards as to what to use for high power speaker connectors, In this age the standard PA power amp was the Crown DC300. The power by today's specs are very lame at 155watts per ch into 8 ohms but it became an industry standard and it was not uncommon to have 50 or more of these to power a rig. The problem was that nobody had figured out what to do about a reliable speaker connector. Quarter inch jacks having only a current rating of one amp were out , unless you wanted a small pyrotechnic display behind your speakers, so many of us back then opted for the XLR but if you made a mistake hooking up cables you could get real problems. I found out that yes, SM58s do make sound when they are driven by a power amp , if only for a second before they evaporated up into smoke. I often needed a crew of 6-10 guys setting up my rig and operating it and sometimes a newbie would come along and POOF! There goes another microphone or DI box. The weirdest thing that happened is once setting up a rig we powered the system up with no microphones yet connected and I was getting feedback. Only to find out that one bass bin had been connected to one of the power amplifiers input and was working like a giant microphone!
In the concert sound industry as amplifier power was greatly increasing thanks to advancements in semiconductor technology , it became more economic to employ less efficient vented bass cabinets over the costly to produce cinema based design horn speakers. It was just less expensive to make a vented box and use more of them with more powerful and affordable power amps. The most expensive component of a bass horn was the horn cab itself and years of getting trucked around mean they would ultimately get destroyed, where as the speaker units can almost go on forever. So keep the speakers and replace the cabs occasionally was a more profitable choice.
So the late 80s, the Neutrik Company of Lichtenstein ( a tiny county in Europe for those of you who are in USA ) developed a new industry standard for high power audio connectors; the Speakon connector. As power amplifiers got more powerful and it was now possible to get electrocuted from the speaker terminals (some amps can swing over 100 volts with huge current and its the current that fries you. So safety of protecting users became a big issue and Speakon connectors are safely insulated from any possibility of electric shock. The "new" connector killed any confusion as what would be hooked up to power amps. And lastly they had the current capacity to handle huge currents from amplifiers for the more affordable , power hungry and less efficient vented bass enclosures now being used in pro-audio sound reinforcement.
Bass players today need far more power to get level and tone to keep up with guitar amps and loud drummers. The reason is simple: bass speaker have to move a lot of air and that calls for a specially developed speaker that has high cone excursion capabilities with low distortion. This can only be economically achieved by using what is known as an over hung voice coil. That means that the coil is longer than the magnetic field and if you want very little distortion this is the ONLY way to get that at a reasonable cost.
In short over hung voice coils trade off speaker efficiency for good bass. So while a 100 watt tube guitar amp flat out level will make your ears almost bleed. To get a bass amp to keep up you need about 1000 watts. The frustrating fact is that guitar speakers are just way more efficient ( some can be 103db/watt) than bass speakers because they dont need such a huge overhang on the voice coil.
So if you had a 1000 watt bass head to keep up with your head banger of a guitarist this is what you need to know because it will help you get the best from your amp.
Say, if you had a 4 ohm speaker, then in order to get a 1000 watts, you amp will give out 63 volts and push 16 amps of current through your speaker cables. A 1/4 inch jack plug is rated at 1 amp so you would be exceeding its max limit by a factor of 16!!!
It is also very important that the speaker cable is of extremely low resistance if you want the full power of your amp going to the speakers. A typical low quality speaker cable could easily be almost half an ohm in resistance (or more) and that would mean that over 100 watts could easily be lost in the cable and that is also frequency specific too! I just wanted to explain this very, and I mean very simply so anyone can grasp this. In fact loudspeaker to amplifier interface is anything but simple and those who have read my earlier posts on speaker impedance will know what I mean.
When I developed PJB speaker cables I did this because there just was not anything like the quality I was looking for on the market. Not only do they ensure that every single watt from your amp gets to your speakers, they will greatly improve your sound giving you more controlled tighter and deeper bass, not to forget the incredible mid and high frequency detail, well that is if you have PJB speakers.
