Quote:
Originally Posted by solidONE
That's what I've read about the clipping and under powering speakers.
I think what soundamn was saying is that as long as the speakers are properly crossed over it's not as much of a risk. I suppose this help prevent 'clipping' along with properly adjusting the gain on your amp?
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Crossover really only deals with the filtering of frequencies that make it to your speaker. It's the core concept that keeps bass only going to your sub, and treble only going to your dash. It won't prevent clipping, as that happens way before the crossover. The square wave that occurs during clipping will still go through to your speakers. Crossovers in sub amps are actually somewhat effective in mitigating this due to the nature of the signal, but setups for regular speakers aren't quite the same in that regard.
Proper gain is a step in the right direction. The big reason to try and match your wattage of speakers to the amp is for a signal power that makes sense. High wattage speakers with a low wattage amp lends itself very easily to the user turning the amp up too high to get the power they want, and clipping occurs. Good speakers will always sound like they can take more, but the amp just can't provide it.
If you match low-to-low watts then yes, it will be right in the range you expect, but as Soundman succinctly put, the control is lacking and the sound will easily distort as they can't take as much pushing as high-wattage speakers. High-to-high watts solves all this, but is also the reason pricing on these goes up exponentially as you increase in wattage.
This is a very dumbed down version of all this, and is really starting to get into sound theory that many people, even sound engineers that work on tours and whatnot, don't always dive into. At the end of the day, you make a setup that works for what you want. When you want more out of it, or come across problems, there are always answers based on these principles. They just usually include more dollar signs.
Edit: A good read on all this can be found at
http://www.prestonelectronics.com/audio/Speakers.htm