RMS, Peak and Program Power There are different power ratings for a loudspeaker. These are continuous, program and peak. The power handling is what a loudspeaker can take before it overheats and becomes damaged. Continuous power is the maximum power a loudspeaker can take when it gets the worst possible signal. Here you get maximum heating of the voice coil. Something like white noise played at full volume for an extended time is likely to distroy tweeters and a low frequency sine wave will destroy bass drivers. It is unusual for a loudspeaker
to ever receive a signal this demanding. Program power is a lot more useful to us. This is the maximum power a loudspeaker can take when receiving a signal that approximates a real world program signal such as music. Peak power is the maximum power the loudspeaker can take over a very short time (under 1/10 of a second). Continuous power is also often referred to as RMS power or AES power. Although RMS, AES and Continuous power are similar there are different specifications of how they are measured. |