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paranoid listener-damaging speakers?

I am one of those guys who is always wondering if he is listening too loud for his speakers capability. my system briefly consists of a prima luna prologue 2 integrated, custom eton 2 way speakers with a silk dome tweeter and 8 inch midrange, with a mhdt labs constantine dac. my room is 15x12 feet roughly. i listen about 6 feet away.
I like to listen at a level where i can feel the bass and midbass and feel that the speakers are loud enough to recreate their original acoustic on the recording. is there a rough guide to know if i am listening too loud without a meter? i will occasinally think i hear some distortion on loud passages, but it may be on the recording, i may just be paranoid? advice please? thanks.
djwilbourn

Showing 3 responses by kijanki

kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,410 posts
 
Djwilbourn - When you overdrive speakers you might damage woofers but when you overdrive amplifier than you'll damage tweeters. In either case you'll hear distortions before it happens.

In case of woofers I would be afraid of mechanical damage and not the overheating since average music power is only few percent of peak power. Tweeters usually fail when amplifier is clipping - sending a lot of high frequency energy (harmonics) to tweeter.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,410 posts
 
Shadorne -

"Thus the ideal 100-watt audio system would need to be capable of handling brief peaks of 10,000 watts in order to avoid clipping (see Programme levels)."

That would is true if average level is insane 100W. In typical home audio system peaks are reaching 100W and average power is around 1W - same ratio.

We could look differently at these ratios. Half as loud means 1/10 of the power.
kijanki's avatar
kijanki
4,410 posts
 
Shadorne - With the amount of money some people spend on audio pursuit every year it might be cheaper to hire symphony orchestra for home performances - nothing beats real thing.
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