I use limiters all the time, because i'm a SPL & headroom junkie and use very high powered amps on multi-way DIYs.
Best solution imo are amps that limit themselves like the Crown HD-5000, that NTK gave as an example earlier.
Plenty of pro-audio amps can do this today. I like QSC, but would probably buy Powersoft if i could afford it.
Here's a limiter paper from Powersoft https://www.powersoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/powersoft_TN009_LimiterSetup_en_v1.0.pdf
Limiters are alot of work to get right ime, but can be done with generic driver specs like size, AES power, bandwidth covered, etc.
Next best solution is the very common speaker management processor right before the amp. But this is predictive limiting and requires more setup and measurement expertise to make sure amp behaves as desired.
These can vary greatly in complexity, from a simple limiter like in miniDSP, to multiband limiters on a single channel, to even sliding xover freq limiters.
With either of those solutions, best (necessary imo) is when both RMS and peak limiting is available.
If you were trying to provide limiting to a passive speaker, you'd have to choose what driver you wanted to protect the most, with everything driven by a single amp channel.
I'd probably use the RMS limiter set to protect the woofer, and the peak set to protect the tweeter.
But that seems kinda hokey really....best is just not bother with limiting a passive......
well best, best, imho.... is just not have a passive speaker to begin with, and have each driver separately powered and limited.
Best solution imo are amps that limit themselves like the Crown HD-5000, that NTK gave as an example earlier.
Plenty of pro-audio amps can do this today. I like QSC, but would probably buy Powersoft if i could afford it.
Here's a limiter paper from Powersoft https://www.powersoft.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/powersoft_TN009_LimiterSetup_en_v1.0.pdf
Limiters are alot of work to get right ime, but can be done with generic driver specs like size, AES power, bandwidth covered, etc.
Next best solution is the very common speaker management processor right before the amp. But this is predictive limiting and requires more setup and measurement expertise to make sure amp behaves as desired.
These can vary greatly in complexity, from a simple limiter like in miniDSP, to multiband limiters on a single channel, to even sliding xover freq limiters.
With either of those solutions, best (necessary imo) is when both RMS and peak limiting is available.
If you were trying to provide limiting to a passive speaker, you'd have to choose what driver you wanted to protect the most, with everything driven by a single amp channel.
I'd probably use the RMS limiter set to protect the woofer, and the peak set to protect the tweeter.
But that seems kinda hokey really....best is just not bother with limiting a passive......
well best, best, imho.... is just not have a passive speaker to begin with, and have each driver separately powered and limited.
