Za 5.5

[salguod]

I have been driving my 5.5 hard lately and keep frying the 4ohm resistor on the tweeter inlet. Can I parallel some resistors? Any suggestions or cure's would be greatly appreciated.

[Lunester]

You can always parallel for more current handling just keeping ohms law in place to get the right value.


Out of curiosity what is the wattage of the 4oh resistor and how much power is amplifier you are using?

[salguod]

There 10 watt resistors and I'm driving them with Classe audio 350 mono blocks. 350 watts each at 8 ohm.

[Lunester]

Yeah, I am thinking you might want to go with about with a min of 20 watts worth,if not 40. When pushing those REALLY loud.

Roughly speaking; the resistor is taking half of what you throw at the high frequencies (tweeter). I would be shocked to find over 100 watts going to the high end.. So lets assume at most we have 100 watts continuous on the high end. Half the watts will go across the 4ohm resistor, and half across the tweeter. So a 50 watt capacity would also max out the power dissipation of the tweeter

By the way, at 100 watts you are at 111 decibels at 1 meter. That's EXTREMELY loud for any extended period of time.


If you want a full 50 watts of power handling, then go with the 20 ohm resistors, and use 5 of them in parallel on each speaker ( totaling 4 ohms):

http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com...eagle-20-ohms/

so a $12 solution.

------OR------

To save a few pennies, the 16 Ohm Eagle Resistors, 10 watts are $.50 a piece on sale. Buy 8 of them. Put 4 in parallel in each speaker and you are good to handle 40 watts.
http://www.madisoundspeakerstore.com...eagle-16-ohms/

Looks like a good $4 solution.



Good luck!

[jkrutke]

In regards to the ZA5.5 power handling, I do think the weakest point for power handling in the system is that resistor. That's intentional however. The next weakest point is the tweeter, and 350 watts is way more than these were designed for. You may toast a couple of tweeters before you figure out just how loud they will get. Good thing they are cheap.

Remember that when sizing resistors for crossovers, you size for average power. With a normal music source, 10 watts average has peaks way past the 100 watts range. Most resistors are damaged by high average power, not by high peaks. Of course the ratio of average power to peak depends on the music.

[salguod]

I have no complaints with these speakers they really sing. They get loud with really no distortion whin the resistor goes. It's seams to blow when I play eminem's vinyl record (recovery). I recently retired the cam-350's for a muse model 100 amp and I think it is a better combination. I will not increase the resistor wattage in harm of blowing the tweeters. Thanks for the knowledge.

[salguod]

The muse model 100 amp with the 5.5's are a scream. You would not believe the bass they produce with that amp. Of course I matched it with the a muse model 3 preamp that I picked up on eBay. I paid 500.00 for the amp and preamp. It was the best purchase I've made as for as electronics go.