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[Bob Burke]

  Hello all. We're going to be doing some postage stamp stage type of things, and I was thinking of using my Yamaha CM12V monitor (350W program handling/800W peak) on a stick by itself as both a small main and monitor, powered by our Yamaha EMX312SC mixer (190 W/8 Ω ) I would be running backing tracks and vocals through it.

  Two questions:

  Is it OK to run just one side of the powered mixer without damaging it? (I am under the impression that there are two discrete amps in it).

  Any danger of damaging the CM12V with only 190 watts? We would never get anywhere near clipping, but it concerns me.


Thanks.


Regards,


Bob

[Taylor Hall]

I would wager you'd be fine on both counts. Most modern amps allow you to operate both channels independently of the other, so only using one output shouldn't hurt anything. For your monitor, it sounds like you know not to overdrive it so as long as you play it safe you ought to be fine.

Have you considered going to an active setup? Seems like that would suit your needs rather well given your scenario.

[Bob Burke]

Thanks for responding. Active would be nice, but we already have this gear, and I'd like to make use of it. We usually use the CM12V as a floor monitor with our S115V Clubs, but the 15's are too large for some of these places.

[Dennis Wiggins]

...use the other channel to drive a passive sub that has a built-in filter.  Just a little bit of lows makes a BIG difference.

-Dennis

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

  Any danger of damaging the CM12V with only 190 watts? We would never get anywhere near clipping, but it concerns me.

Under-powering, using any reasonable definition for those words, has never, ever caused speaker failure.  Speakers die from over-powering, either in the form of too much instantaneous voltage (over-excursion), and/or too much sustained power (thermal failure).

Keep your amp from clipping and you'll be fine.

[Robert Weston]

  Hello all. We're going to be doing some postage stamp stage type of things, and I was thinking of using my Yamaha CM12V monitor (350W program handling/800W peak) on a stick by itself as both a small main and monitor, powered by our Yamaha EMX312SC mixer (190 W/8 Ω ) I would be running backing tracks and vocals through it.

  Two questions:

  Is it OK to run just one side of the powered mixer without damaging it? (I am under the impression that there are two discrete amps in it).

  Any danger of damaging the CM12V with only 190 watts? We would never get anywhere near clipping, but it concerns me.


Thanks.


Regards,


Bob

The Yamaha EMX amplifier should be fine.  But also to be safe, you should be using an amp closer to the speakers continuous rating (vs. its "program" rating), which you are doing with the EMX amp.  Just make sure your don't run the EMX into clipping (continuous).  It's easy to do if all you are doing is running vocals through it.

[duane massey]

I do something similar every week at a restaurant gig. Light jazz/pop trio, management loves it because it doesn't get really loud and it doesn't LOOK loud. I'd definitely bring in a sub if we actually were trying to play rock or dance music, but it would serve no purpose in this application.
And, as everyone else mentioned, you won't hurt anything by doing this. +1 on TJ's post.

[John Rutirasiri]

Under-powering, using any reasonable definition for those words, has never, ever caused speaker failure.  Speakers die from over-powering, either in the form of too much instantaneous voltage (over-excursion), and/or too much sustained power (thermal failure).

Keep your amp from clipping and you'll be fine.

While not ideal, under-powering is acceptable as long as the amp doesn't clip all the time.  If the amp is constantly clipping, you can fry the high freq drivers.

Most modern stand-alone power amps have built-in limiters that will prevent clipping.  Some are almost unnoticeable when they activate, some you can hear.  I don't know if the Yamaha powered mixer you use has a limiter -- please check.

Good luck,
JR

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

While not ideal, under-powering is acceptable as long as the amp doesn't clip all the time.  If the amp is constantly clipping, you can fry the high freq drivers.

If this myth/logical fallacy would never be repeated again, we would all be a lot better off.
I will challenge anyone to find an example where putting a larger amp on a speaker has prevented it from failing.

While it is true that extreme clipping increases HF content, that only causes speaker damage if the "too-small" amp is big enough to over-power the tweeter.  Saying this for emphasis - that is OVER-powering. It's not the shape of the waveform that wrecks stuff, it's very simply too much power either instantaneously or cumulatively.

The logical fallacy that the "under-powering" parrots miss is that if a user is stupid enough to drive a small amp into extreme clipping, what's going to stop them from driving a large amp into clipping and blowing up the speaker faster?

I'm not picking on you John; this is just a pet peeve of mine and has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.

[John Sabine]

In my 30 + years in the consumer electronics industry I find your statement that under powering speakers will not blow them to be inaccurate. I not only work with pro audio but sell and install home theater and car audio speakers. Many times I have had customers buy (against my advice) the biggest woofers available for their car yet skimp on a power amplifier and either buy an amp that is too small or buy one of the wonder amps on the market that offers 10,000 watts for $99.00 and come back with very nice woofers with very cooked voice coils. I've seen this scenario several times a year repeated over my many years in the industry. I once had a customer purchase the most expensive woofer I had in stock (A Punch Pro Series 12" subwoofer that I believe had a rating of 400 watts RMS). We tried to sell him an amplifier but he only wanted the speaker. He came back a week later with the speaker blown. The voice coil was completely locked up. I asked to see how he had hooked it up and what he was running the sub with. He took me to his car where I discovered that he had been driving the sub with one channel of his high powered in dash radio. I asked him to turn his radio up to the volume he usually listened at and he ran the volume up to maximum. He had managed to fry the voice coil of a 400 watt woofer with what was probably 12w of highly distorted power.
 I'm not saying that this guy or any of the other customers I've dealt with wouldn't have totally smoked their speakers with the recommended amount of power but I can say that I see and have seen many speakers come back as charred locked up blobs of nothing after being exposed to high levels of distortion over extended periods of time on amplifiers that were far below the rated power handling of the woofer.

If this myth/logical fallacy would never be repeated again, we would all be a lot better off.
I will challenge anyone to find an example where putting a larger amp on a speaker has prevented it from failing.

While it is true that extreme clipping increases HF content, that only causes speaker damage if the "too-small" amp is big enough to over-power the tweeter.  Saying this for emphasis - that is OVER-powering. It's not the shape of the waveform that wrecks stuff, it's very simply too much power either instantaneously or cumulatively.

The logical fallacy that the "under-powering" parrots miss is that if a user is stupid enough to drive a small amp into extreme clipping, what's going to stop them from driving a large amp into clipping and blowing up the speaker faster?

I'm not picking on you John; this is just a pet peeve of mine and has been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked.

[ProSoundWeb Community]