Welcome! Need support, you got it. Or share your ideas and experiences.
Return to Planar Speaker Asylum
50.132.28.230
In Reply to: RE: Acme Audio Silver Ceramic Fuse posted by LineSource on July 30, 2014 at 11:32:53
It's highly questionable whether a fuse, any fuse, will provide sufficient protection to the ribbon tweeter in a Magnepan speaker. They just don't act fast enough to prevent significant deflection of the ribbon in the event of an amplifier failure or excessive out-of-band information. If those fancy fuses make you feel better then I guess they're providing a subjective safety aspect, but if you have an amplifier that protects itself (and the load) well then you could forego the fuses altogether.
Dave.
Follow Ups:
"It's highly questionable whether a fuse, any fuse, will provide sufficient protection to the ribbon tweeter in a Magnepan speaker."
Over the years having blown many of the 2.5 amp 'tweeter' fuses in my Tympani IV-A, and not experiencing any ribbon failure, I'm willing to question it. :-)
I suspect you're blowing those from gradual heating with nominally loud music playing under normal conditions. I don't really think the tweeter would be in danger from that.
I'm talking about amplifier failures or some other event that might manage to produce a pulsive signal that could deflect the tweeter and compromise it mechanically but not thermally before a fuse element could heat enough to open.
Cheers,
Dave.
I'm sorry, but that's not correct. Most, if not all the times I blow fuses have been when I inadvertently switched into a source that's been set to play at a too high volume level. If not having been protected by fuses, I think I might have had to replace the ribbons many times over.
Good anecdote. You could be correct, but I suspect the tweeter would have survived just fine in those instances. Unless you're saying the actual switching itself generated some sort of transient? If that's the case, obviously you should get in the habit of reducing the volume to minimum when switching sources.
Switching to a higher level source and then acting quickly to turn down the volume is more like the gradual heating I noted vice a short transient.
Regardless, an installed fuse would, by definition, provide more protection than no fuse.......all other things being equal. But whether it would actually prevent a failure of the ribbon transducer itself is still a gray area...IMHO.
Cheers,
Dave.
Switching doesn't produce transients in my rig. If it did, causing fuses to blow, it would happen nearly all the time and it wouldn't matter if the next source was at a different level, be it higher or lower. Although I try to do my best in lowering volume settings before switching, in the heat of the moment I forget myself. Very often it's when I'm attempting an instantaneous A/B comparison between two sources, (and even though I'm very aware that I'd be making the two levels identical as is possible for it to be of any significance).
I have found that bypassing the fuse, although a tad "cleaner", provides a high frequency tilt that is unpleasant in my Maggie 20's. So I much prefer the sound of a "quality" fuse in. It sounds like Magnepan "voiced" the speaker with a fuse in-line. On the other hand, I do not like the effect of the tweeter resistor.I agree with Neolith - I have never actually blown a tweeter fuse, but I've replaced many an edgy tweeter that's been stressed out.
Edits: 08/14/14 08/14/14
Post a Followup:
FAQ |
Post a Message! |
Forgot Password? |
|
||||||||||||||
|
This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors: