Sound / Speaker Help

ok, I know this isnt the place to ask, but you guys have helped me lots and I figured you can help me again! So here are the tings I would like to know about speakers and sound, etc.

If you have 4 200w speakers, would u need a 800w Amp?

What are the values of a 10" perfectly good 200w speaker?

There are subwoofers... and: ( what are the types of speakers?)

What happens when you blow a speaker?

Whats the value of a ( good )Pioneer 200w Amplifier/ Reciever?

Thanx for ur time!

DJNafey is a bit of an expert with ICE systems and so will undoubtedly have some good advice when he sees this thread. However, I'll offer what little advice I can.

If you drive speakers too hard (too powerful an amp) they'll blow and cease to work. It could also short your amp and cause permanent damage to that. If the ampis actually in your head unit then you could say good bye to that. Using an amp that is too underpowered for a set of speakers does no long lasting damage but you won't be able to get the best out of the speakers. Therefore it pays to match your speakers and amp with a little headroom in the speaker rating.

The most important thing is to compare like for like when it comes ot power rating and impedance. Power can be measured in Watts RMS/PMP/PMPO etc. Ignore everything and get the RMS values for the amp and speaker at the speaker's impedance (usually 4 or 8 Ohms). Subs use a different impedance to most other speakers. Generally you can break down speakers into Subwoofers (sub bass), woofers (bass and mid), tweeters (mid and treble). There is overlap between them. Sub woofers need only be driven by a mono sound source since they produce a non-directional feeling rather than a directional sound. The others should be run in stereo and placed well.

Typically if you have something like a 4x200 amp (in car terms) you'd run a bridged mono channel at 400Watts and get something like a 500 Watt Sub on it and a pair of 250Watt rated 6x9" speakers that contain woofers and tweeters to run off the remaining two channels.

You also need to understand the priniciple of cross overs which is a device that filters high and low signals out. You need to ensure you only feed the right "portion" of the sound to the correct speaker type or else it sounds pants. Things like 6x9" speakers have built in passive crossovers but for a sub you'll want to use an active crossover (often handled by the amp) Difference between active and passive is that passive filters after amplification and active before it (so you only amplify the bit you want thus being more efficient)

I could go on and on but I'll leave it to see if you want any more specific question answered.

Ok i think i got it now, but whats so good about 6X9's? why not just get a 9 round?

do they have built in tweeters to save space?

whats the diff between subwoofer and woofer?

what does PMPO... can you compare it to watts?

To answer your points in turn:

Nothing wrong with a 9" round speaker but you want a balanced sound. A 6x9 speaker actually contains two, three or four seperate speakers. Some for bass, soe for mid and some for treble. Thus the unit can reproduce the entire sound spectrum. A 9" is likely to be a woofer or sub woofer and thus only be able to reproduce bass or sub-bass sounds. If you only had 9" woofers you would not hear any vocals, guitars etc. because the speaker is not desinged to reproduce those sounds. Dance music enthusiasts would want more bass but not at the expense of treble because even dance tracks have vocal samples or keyboards that need to be heard. Basically you can't have a sound system without tweeters at the end of the day

Difference between woofers and sub woofers is the frequency range they cover. Sub woofers reproduce sub-bass sounds which is generally everything below 100Hz. This is sound you can "feel" rather than hear. Woofers handle higher frequency ranges in the bass/mid category so things like bass guitars, punchy drum beats etc.

PMPO is a measurement of Watts. Watts can be expresse din one of the three ways I described. PMPO is the peak output in Watts. The amp cannot sustain output of that many watts for a prolonged period of time. It is used by manufacturers to inflate the perception of how good their products are. You should ignore PMPO and always look for the value (in Watts) of the average output or RMS as it is more commonly known. If that is not avaiable to you, you can get a rough idea by dividing the PMPO figure by 4. Nearly every reputable manufacturer of audio kit will quote RMS output and not peak or PMPO. I reiterate that the impedence also plays a vital part since at lower impedance you can quote a higher wattage so always compare like-for-like. For example 200Watts PMPO at 4 Ohms is not as good as 30Watts RMS at 8 Ohms but which one do you think will be quoted to you?!

Also wattage is no indication of sound quality. You need to look at things like signal-to-noise ratio as well.

ooo ok thnks... but i still dont understand: if i have 4 200w speakers... would i need a 800w amplifier to max them out?

Look at the specs of your speakers, are they 200 Watts average/RMS or 200 Watts PMPO?

Then find an amp of similar spec minus a little. So if they are 200 Watts RMS at 8 Ohms then you want an amp with 4 x 150 Watts RMS at 8 Ohms. If they're PMPO at 4 Ohms then you want an amp with 4 x 150 Watts PMPO at 4 Ohms. You just need to be sure you're comparing like-for-like as far as the watts are concerned.

You could get 4x200Watt amp and just not drive them at full volume.