I recently had a salesperson tell me that the amp he was showing me could handle a complete short of a channel and keep functioning just fine with all other channels -- once the short was fixed the shorted channel would also work fine.
I asked him to demonstrate this and he demonstrated it in the following way: since the amp was bi-wired to the speaker, he simply put both positive bananas to the + and - posts for the high frequencies, and both negative bananas to the + and - posts for the low frequencies.
He said this would simulate a short.
I'm not sure this does simulate a short, since there were no connecting bars between the low frequency and high frequency posts, and as far as I know the internal networks in such speakers are not actually connected.
Anyone else know? Was this a valid example of a short?
Of course, I could always go back, ask him to just touch the negative and positive together directly, and see what happens...
J. Vigne
Unregistered guest
Posted on
If you are saying he took the two positive leads from the hot (+) output of the amplifier and connected them through the driver's voice coil using the positive and negative terminals he simply made loop of the cable and did not have a hot to ground connection. Draw it out on paper. Now take away one of the legs of + and one of -. You can see that all he did was put the driver in the loop of the cable. He loaded the circuit down with resistance but did not create a dead short. He more than likely was using a demo that someone (a rep?) showed him. No matter, it is a stupid demo. You shouldn't care how an amp reacts with a dead short unless you hook up speaker wires while under the influence. Look for someone who sells their product on how it sounds not how it goes into protection.