"Power hungry" speakers

First let me state that I have seen improvements in the sound of many speakers through use of more powerful amplifiers. In particular, my MG 1.6 now enjoy 600 watts.
However, it is very obvious (a simple voltage measurement will do) that the power actually drawn by the speakers is nowhere near the amplifier's capability. There are other amplifier characteristric that come with high power capability that do the magic.

Crossover networks may have a lot to do with speaker performance, but they don't "eat up" power. If they did they would get very hot, which they don't, and could not be mounted inside a wool (or fiberglass) insulated box.

The first thing you learn in EE101 is that the power dissipated in a capacitor is zero.

The woofer inductor will generate a little heat because the woofer amps flow through the inductor. However, crossover inductors generally have low resistance compared with the driver, so most of the heat will end up in the driver voice coil.

A crossover without any capacitors means that the tweeter must have an inductor in parallel with it. To avoid a near dead short on the amplifier at low frequency a resistor must be put in series. This resistor, and the inductor will draw power, and will get hot. This "capacitorless" crossover is essentially a series crossover, with the woofer and its parallel capacitor replaced by a resistor.

Sean...Even as I typed it I knew that you would take issue with my comment about capacitors dissipating no power! OK. An ideal capacitor dissipates no power. Real capacitors are not ideal. But, with regard to power dissipation, they are darned close.

Have you ever experimented with a capacitorless crossover? What do you think? With your multiKilowatt amplification system a little power loss could be tolerated.

Sean125...As you say, "Earth shattering" or "ear splitting" volume does not require many watts. Doing it so that your ears are not split is the purpose of high powered amps. By the way, we tend to judge loudness by the presence of distortion. If it is distorted it sounds loud, even if an accurate SPL meter proves otherwise.

Sean..So you have your capacitors in line level circuits instead of in the speaker circuit. Can you describe why these capacitors are OK, while others are fraught with problems?

I gather that you drive your tweeters directly from full range power amps (trusting the input signal to limit LF output). Isn't this a bit risky? It seems to me that the inductor based high pass filter would be ideal for tweeter protection.

In the past I have had many biamp (and multiamp) systems. When stereo was introduced I "canibalized" a biamp system to get the necessary two channels. I do believe that modern amplifiers have very much reduced the advantages of biamping, except for extreme situations like pro sound systems, and that biamping between a subwoofer and mains (which I still do) is where it is still worth the trouble.
When I say "in the past" I am talking of 10 watt amplifiers with 1 percent IM distortion. That's when biamping really helped!

Sean...Actually, low level crossovers can be passive, (I think that Marchand sells one) although that is usually not the case. Anyway, active crossovers are implemented with capacitors.

Sean...I find that "large scale classical" pieces often run about 76 dB most of the time, with occasional louder passages. The way I determine this is by playing a concerto (for example: violin) or a vocal piece. I ask myself "is the violin louder than a real violin can play?" or a similar question for the vocalist. I often find that it is easy to crank the volume up higher than this criteria would allow. Perhaps this is because we are used to listening to "live" performances that are "reinforced". Amplification of an instrument above its true volume is like putting your girlfriend's complexion under a microscope. You will not like the result.

Down in New Orleans last week (I have almost sobered up) I spoke with some musicians who suggested a reason for the exaggerated bass that seems to be so prevalent. They suggested that the guys who do the audio mixing have been overexposed to loud music, and have lost LF hearing. (I thought it was HF that goes first, but they said No, LF). To these guys the exaggerated bass sounds right.