[PD] Speaker protection abstraction

[Andy Farnell]

It's quite rare to find a sound card and amplification system
that can actually deliver DC. These are usually specialised 
DACs for control applications. Regular audio equipment uses
DC blocking capacitors (analogue high-pass) that won't admit
anything much below 5-10Hz. 

All the same, if you are using an experimental signal processing
system like Pd or any other computer music language along with
high power amplification for a live audience, it is sensible
to add a compressor/limiter at the end of the chain. For the
sake of your audience rather than the speakers.

This should be a separate piece of hardware, not part of
the software system that could fail.


On Mon, 1 Dec 2008 08:50:41 -0500
"Spencer Russell" <spencer.f.russell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Most of my live performance work involves realtime processing of
> upright bass, and I find myself often using a lot of very short
> variable IIR taps (delays with feedback).
> 
> I use either my 500-watt bass amp or the house PA as output.
> 
> Right now I don't have any explicit patchage to make sure I'm not
> pumping out any signal that's straining the amplification system, and
> if I watch my speakers as I play I often see them popping in and out
> in a distressing fashion.
> 
> I'm thinking I should start including some basic speaker protection
> into the output stage of my patches, mostly a limiter and highpass
> filter to get rid of any sub-audio and DC signal.
> 
> Is this necessary? I assume that either the output of the firebox or
> the input of my amplification setup is AC-coupled and should be
> getting rid of DC anyways, but we all know what happens when you
> assume.
> 
> Are other people using speaker protection patches? Anything more
> sophisticated than the classic [hip~ 5] before the output?
> 
> -spencer
> 
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