Effects of Clipping
In power amplifiers, the signal from an amplifier operating in clipping has two characteristics that could damage a connected loudspeaker:
- Because the clipped waveform has more area underneath it than the smaller maximum unclipped waveform, the amplifier produces more output power. (See the waveform to the right for an example.) This extra power can cause damage to loudspeaker components, including the woofer, tweeter, or crossover, via overheating.
- In the frequency domain, clipping produces harmonics at higher frequencies than the unclipped signal. This additional high frequency energy has the potential to damage a loudspeaker's tweeter via overheating.
Other effects of clipping include:
- Music which is clipped experiences amplitude compression, whereby all notes begin to sound equally loud because loud notes are being clipped to the same output level as softer notes.
Read more about this topic: Clipping (audio)
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