Humboldt just tripped,

G

greystoke4

Member
Joined
May 8, 2016
Messages
102
Location
Nottingham UK
Hi have a few friends round, few beers, playing Uriah heep free'n' Easy, over 96db on the db into Wilson audio sasha's , meter, showing -16 db on the amp, don't actually know what this means, sounded great, then boom nothing, message came up on the screen of the humboldt, right channel overload, shutting down, and discharging :eek:, waited 10 mins fired it back up, no problems, crapping myself,:confused:, were up and running, at a lot less level, but still good, 70-80 db, more 70db than 80db, my spectral 360m mk2 mono's were a lot louder, used to shake the house, only now and again ,
we were all there at the Innocent victim tour at demontfort hall way back in the day, i did think that John Lawton was a great singer,
 
Doesn't sound good and hope all is fine , but playing loud as you like maybe you should go for something like the Relentless Mono Amplifier , but also upgrade your power line in your house....and then you can play as loud as you want with no problems i am sure :)
 
free and easy:)

hi greystoke, sorry to hear you have a problematic situation.
the humboldt shuts down when it dedects a problem. it protects itself. happened here 3 times as well with me.
1 time because it was really too loud and popped the speaker an 2 times for no reason i could see (not even too loud).
-16db is really no problem at all, you can go higher up to -9 and there wont be a problem.
 
Hope all is ok. This is an exception that deserves communication with the manufacturer.
 
greystoke4 said:
Hi have a few friends round, few beers, playing Uriah heep free'n' Easy, over 96db on the db into Wilson audio sasha's , meter, showing -16 db on the amp, don't actually know what this means, sounded great, then boom nothing, message came up on the screen of the humboldt, right channel overload, shutting down, and discharging :eek:, waited 10 mins fired it back up, no problems, crapping myself,:confused:, were up and running, at a lot less level, but still good, 70-80 db, more 70db than 80db, my spectral 360m mk2 mono's were a lot louder, used to shake the house, only now and again ,
we were all there at the Innocent victim tour at demontfort hall way back in the day, i did think that John Lawton was a great singer,
Click to expand...

Humboldt is an 8 ohm load amplifier your WA loudspeakers represents too much of a load to drive at those levels so you obviously ran it into protection due to exceeding SOA ...


Regards
 
Not in my budget so never really looked close at the specs. Since you mentioned it, the 4 ohm rating is 460 only slightly up from the 320 into 8. For some reason I assume mega dollar amps to produce tons of current. I'll have to stop that :)

a.wayne said:
Humboldt is an 8 ohm load amplifier your WA loudspeakers represents too much of a load to drive at those levels so you obviously ran it into protection due to exceeding SOA ...


Regards
Click to expand...
 
Hi thanks everyone, yes it was loud ,, just too much beer and friends, the Humboldt sounded so clear ,right up to shut down, speakers alright, and amp is just fine, normally play about 70db, that's fine, don't want to loose my hearing,
great amp but i have tripped my DMA360 m2 mono's, as well, luckily no speaker damage,
 
Wow, that was scary, I bet. A few weeks ago, I had some friends over and the music got loud. Then, the wife wanted it louder, so up it went. So loud, that it was like listening to live, amplified music. I was worried that my Watt Puppy 8's were going to blow a speaker. After a couple minutes of this ultra loud playing, I turned the volume back down to my normal listening levels, as my anxiety level was way up. My Pass Labs XA100.5s didn't break a sweat(I'm not even sure they went out of class A) and the system shows no ill effects, thank goodness.
 
the thing is if you blow a driver, its in the thousands, or at least the high hundreds, worst still if you damage your amp, your friends go home, and your left kicking yourself, thank god for amp protection, but when your playing ACDC hells bells, very loud, you do have a huge daft grin on your face, :P
 
Interesting. That amp has two 850VA transformers and 312,000 uF capacity. Combined with the 2x380 Watt rating at 4 Ohm it should able to make your ears bleed! It is definitely a safety setting. Check your cables. I have had this message when I was connecting gear to my preamp, without switching off the power amps. The RCA plugs caused noise which provoked this situation.
I am convinced nothing was at risk in your system.
 
You have overheated the amp or tripped overcurrent protection (which would lead to overheating situation). Better than blowing up the speaker you have.

Listening to ACDC on full blast is definately fun! I only listen loud to ACDC ... on my MasterCraft boat. Two 12" subs, 6 in-cabin speakers, 4 speakers on the tower + over 2500W of onboard JL Audio amplification can really make you "feel" the music. It takes us 8 min to get to our marina after our wake surfing set ... just enough for two songs and not to blow up the speakers, lol.
 
HI, ICUToo yes the amp is on DC coupled setting, i think, just had a look, don't really know what im looking for, BUT what is this , and what does it do, the manual is not to clear, and when the amp came, it was x-dem, and the delivery guy did not set it up for me, so i have been using it as it came, thinking it would be set at optimal setting, i only use rca 3 input, as i only have a Esoteric K01-X cd player, front end, but that's all i need, :rolleyes: and i do not know if there is a DC on the inputs,

Also do sharks play their Humboldt with the screen on or off, mine goes off after a few seconds, but i am struggling to hear a difference,

i have Wilson audio Sashes mk 1 interconnects are MITmatrix60, speaker cable is MIT matrix60, , speakers are on Townshend podiums , they do work.
work, any advice, system sounds great , playing ,blue oyster cult,, agents of fortune, at -26db on the screen, changed that to30db on screen ,got to go previously unreleased track playing, never got this far on this album, wow , DFTR, so soft and so goood , thanks
ps had a few beers ,
i have edited this post about 6 times, can you make my system sound better,,
 
I'm no expert but I understand that DC-coupling is the highest fidelity setting, which is good.
The danger is if your source has DC on it (as you know, music is a variable signal, could be called, loosely, AC).
DC is direct current, a constant current in one direction all the time, not varying like a sine wave or complex musical waves.
There might only be a few hundred millivolts out of your CD player or other source, but the Humboldt, when DC-coupled, will amplify that DC component to MANY volts. This will result in a large amount amount of flat, invariant (DC) current to the speakers, causing them to push WAAAY past the end stops in one direction and get really hot, which can break them by physical stress or thermal destruction.
Taking the amp OUT of DC-coupling will engage a circuit to remove any DC offset and not pass it on to the speakers.
Possibly a sonic penalty to that, but note that most other amps do it!
Note that large DC offsets in modern sources are rare!
 
Doubt DC had anything to do with your situation, if your amp shuts down and your able to reset it off and on immediately then most likely thats from an over current situation and it went into protect.

If it was from an overheating situation it would have to cool somewhat to come back on so that would take a few mins to reset , so if you had to wait 5-15 mins before you could reset and turn on then thats temperature ..

If it was from a DC situation at the input you would have this offset all the time and shutting down would be more common ..


My 2cents ...!
 
The other thing is to consider that the Humboldt is SO clean and lacks so much audible distortion that you can turn it up EXTREMELY loud before it sounds like it's loud- try walking out of your listening room and see how loud it is when you think it is at a "reasonable " volume inside.
I found it is super-loud outside, but you just don't notice it inside. This may explain you overdoing it, in that you thought it wasn't putting out as much power as it really was.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top