Is there a sound associated with clipping? (1 Viewer)

[Steve_Ma]

Is there a sound associated with clipping? I was sure I was bottoming my tower's tweeter, but now I'm wondering if it could have been the AVR (Marantz SR7000) being overdriven.

I was playing tones of increasingly higher freq, measuring the room reponse. when I heard a clear "clack...clack....clack" from the rt side of my entertainment ctr (near the component rack and my rt tower). Ok, no flames. Lesson learned about the volume and high freq test tones.

B&W thought I might have blown a tweet, and suggested (more carefully) playing test tones would be a sure-fire way to find out if there was any driver damage. After running all the way up to 20khz with (seemingly) no distortion, all seems ok. So I'm wondering if that gawd awful sound could have been the AVR clipping?

Thoughts?

--Steve

 

[Chris PC]

Weird. Clipping is usually a non-linear sounding crackle. Very disturbing and it sounds exactly what it is. An interupted waveform. A repeated Clack, clack ,clack sounds odd. Not sure if that would be clipping. Are you sure there were'nt any low frequency harmonics in there making your woofers bottom?

 

[Steve_Ma]

Hi Chris PC

Are you sure there were'nt any low frequency harmonics in there making your woofers bottom?

Good question. I'm not positive which freq was the one that did it, so I'm hard pressed to say for sure one way or the other. I don't imagine so, since the tone was pretty high pitched, but I'm not 100% sure.

Thanks for the feedback, though.

--Steve

 

[Chris PC]

Try not to test your speakers and amps at high volumes using tones and stuff. You never know what their limits are in your room with your sources and amp/receiver. You don't want to discover the limits by reaching them. That can mean breaking or damaging something. I say, try the same test at a much lower volume. Try it a little louder and if you don't hear it at moderate volume, then I wouldn't worry too much. Does music and program material still sound good?

 

[Steve_Ma]

Yup, I went through all the test tones again last night and all seemed ok. I was able to hit tones (yes, at much lower volumes) all the way up and down the spectrum without problems. I still need to do some critical music listening at higher volumes, but no audible difference so far.

Thanks,

--Steve