LOUDNESS, AND THE POWER TO GET IT THAT WAY

To increase the loudness two-fold takes ten times the power. A SoundTech speaker rated at 94db will produce this level from 1 Watt at 1 meter's distance from the cabinet. As the sound travels away from the loudspeaker cabinet, the dB (Decibel) level also decreases. This in turn requires more power to mantain a specific dB level at a given distance from the cabinet.

WATTS (Power)

The smallest increase in loudness of 3dB takes twice the power. To increase the level to seem twice as loud, you need ten times the power. If you try to sustain a given loudness within a particular room size and do not have enough power (watts), several things begin to happen within your sound system. As you use up amplifier headroom, the sense of detail in the reproduced sound will disappear. Then you may hear distortionon signal peaks - the distortion is generally easier to hear at higher frequencies, but is much more common at low (bass) frequencies. This means the amp is running short of power to send to the speakers. Allowing this state to continue will reach the third stage of failure, over distortion followed by voice coil burnout. Many people have an amazingly high tolerance for distortion and just do not notice a problem until it is too late.

IMPROPER OPERATION

It is easy to damage loudspeakers by overdriving them. This happens when you turn the volume control up too far, causing distortion. Most failures resulting from improper operation can be traced to over or under powering the loudspeakers. When an amplifier is underrated in power and turned up too loud, it is unable to supply more clean power to the loudspeakers, resulting in a distorted signal being passed to the loudspeaker. The cones or diaphragm becomes unstable with no power left to propel it foward or pull it back, and hear builds up on the voice coil.
A sustained level of even a few watts of distorted power is always fatal to loudspeaker components. Remember, if you are losing detail or hear distortion, TURN IT DOWN to prevent loudspeaker damage and obtain a louder sound, use more powerful amplifiers and/or more speaker cabinets. This is entirely dependent upon the level of sound desired and room size. The two possible solutions are:
1. Use a more powerful amplifier - one with a rated output that DOES NOT exceed the power of rating of the speakers.
2. Use more speaker cabinets -in the correct series- parallel arrangement to match the required inpedance load of the amplifier.

SPEAKER POWER RATINGS

By far the most common cause of loudspeaker failure is damage to the voice coils caused by amplifier overload. Speaker damage from faulty components or manufacturing defects is very rare. The overwhelming majority of failures are due to misunderstanding the difference between loudness (decibel, dB) and the power to create it (watts, W).

THIS INFORMATION WAS DIRECTLY OBTAINED FROM SOUNDTECH.