Speaker fuses?

Question

I have 2 Cerwin Vega towers which can handle up to 600W of power each. I'm only giving them about 150 to each speaker. I've checked polarity and it is correct. But I keep popping the fuses on the speakers themselves.

Any ideas why? Anything I can do to alleviate this?

thanks in advance

Answer 1

another reason is you may be putting the wrong size fuses in the speakers, which if they're too thin can blow under less power, if they are too thick, they can allow more power to travel through them thus causing your speakers to blow.

Answer 2

Two ideas. The most likely is distortion. When you drive an amp into distortion it's actual power output goes way up very, very fast. A 150w amp can easily reach peaks of 1000w once driven to distortion. That is why amp specs are always given in the format [e-mail].H.D. (watts at a rating of total harmonic distortion). If an amp is not rated this way it may as well not be rated at all because you have no idea how they measured it. For example a certain sub-woofer which shall remain nameless is rated at 100 watts at 10%T.H.D. That means the actual clean power output is more like 30watts. A speaker that can take 600watts of clean power can only take maybe 100W of distorted power. It is also very possible that the rating on the speaker is not R.M.S. but peak power in which case your supposed 600w speakers have an actual rating of 200w or 100w if it is measured peak to peak. One of the many ways some manufacturers rip you off. That is also why some speakers with relatively low power ratings cost so much more than others with much higher ratings.

The other possibility is that there is something wrong with them. Since you say fuses (plural) I'll assume there is not something wrong with both speakers. Either you are driving the amp too hard, or driving the speakers too hard. In either case the solution is the same, turn it down!

Knowing the price of CV speakers I have to assume your "600w" speakers can actually take between 50w and 100w. If your amp is as cheap as your speakers it's output will have a lot more distortion than it claims. Power does not usually blow speakers, distortion does. That is why your fuses are blowing.