Is it that easy to blow up a subwoofer?

[bunkbail]

Great to hear. So, to avoid ACTUALLY breaking your woofer, you should still add a high pass filter.

Sure, will absolutely do it from now on!

 

[MZKM]

Not sure exactly how this comment is relevant to this thread, but thanks for the information.

Just stating the usefulness of a high-pass, as it can indeed damage a sub if you try to blast 10Hz notes into it.

 

[tomtoo]

Hehe thats cool only the chip did go into protection. What ever protection it was?

Where is the champus??

Edit says: It makes me happy. Couse its always good to see happy people.

 

[tomtoo]

Rembers me a little at a moment when i was 16.
Yea i was the proud owner of a technics su 8088 and two dual cl730 speakers. And what 16 years old do, making party. So we were lucky and got a room from the church. Around 30 teens that just wanted to enjoy musik. After around two hours the thermal protection of the amp kicked in. I was not stupid after checking the fuses i hoped it was thermal protection. But yea this where very loooong ten minutes.

 

[Vini darko]

Glad your equipment is ok. Bassotronics is serious stuff.

 

[CDMC]

That Bassotronics album has insane amounts of subsonic bass. Even my Rythmiks struggle with it at higher volumes. If I am not careful, the subs will bottom. That album and a handful of others really only exist for people with huge subs to show them off. 99% of music and movies don’t have content below 30 hz.

 

[sweetchaos]

That is probably why you have a dead subwoofer, yes. The excursion of your woofer rises uncontrollably below your port tuning frequency. So a high pass filter, typically somewhere between 10-20hz depending on the design, is essentially a must on ported subwoofers.

Sorry for going off your topic OP, but...3 quick questions:

1. How can you add a high-pass filter to a non-DIY subwoofer?
I can only think of MiniDSP.
2. I have HSU VTF-3 MK5 HP Subwoofer.
It's a ported sub.
CEA2010 measurements shows it can hit 16hz (info provided by HSU).
Lower –3dB point is at 17 Hz and the –6dB point is at 15 Hz (source).
Do I need to worry about implementing a high-pass filter? I mostly use the sub for movies.
3. Does volume (relative to 0dB on the receiver) have an influence on this issue?
Example: I don't play movies very loud...not louder than -15dB relative to reference level.

Any feedback is appreciated for a newb like me.

 

[sigbergaudio]

Sorry for going off your topic OP, but...3 quick questions:

1. How can you add a high-pass filter to a non-DIY subwoofer?
I can only think of MiniDSP.
2. I have HSU VTF-3 MK5 HP Subwoofer.
It's a ported sub.
CEA2010 measurements shows it can hit 16hz (info provided by HSU).
Lower –3dB point is at 17 Hz and the –6dB point is at 15 Hz (source).
Do I need to worry about implementing a high-pass filter? I mostly use the sub for movies.
3. Does volume (relative to 0dB on the receiver) have an influence on this issue?
Example: I don't play movies very loud...not louder than -15dB relative to reference level.

Any feedback is appreciated for a newb like me.

1. If you have a non-DIY ported subwoofer, it is very likely that it already has a high pass filter built-in. Pretty sure yours do too.
2. It likely has one already. The tuning frequency of your subwoofer is very low, so they probably have a highpass filter at or immediately below the tuning frequency.
3. Not sure exactly what you're asking here, but risk of damage to your subwoofer obviously increase with volume, yes.

 

[jrosser]

Here is the datasheet for the chip in your TPA3255 amplifier.

https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tpa3255.pdf

I think that your amplifier went into thermal shutdown when asked to produce continuous high level LF output. The TPA3255 can do this in two ways, OTW (over-temperature warning) when the chip continues to function but signals that it is becoming too hot, or OTE (over-temperature error) where the chip will unconditionally shut down until it is reset, probably through power cycling the amp once it has cooled.

The datasheet shows from the efficiency / system power loss graphs on page 11 you're needing to dissipate around 30W of heat at the 160W max output (35v PSU / 4R load). The Aiyima amp is very small and has no external heatsink so thermal management of the amp chip is going to be the root cause of your trouble.

Section 11.4 of the datasheet shows that proper thermal management is very important for subwoofer applications:

For continuous output there is a significant de-rating required to stay within a safe thermal envelope, and this can happen only if there is adequate thermal management / heat sinking of the chip.

The TI class D chips can produce good results, see nice examples from 3e-audio and others, but they do need to be well engineered to achieve the performance specified on the datasheet.