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Sometimes you just want to turn your speakers off loud

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and jam out, right? Am I right? But have you ever noticed that they'll sometimes crackle

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or sound distorted if you start really pushing the volume? This is a phenomenon called clipping.

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And unlike that thing that you do to your nails, sometimes if you're actually being hygienic,

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this is something you never want to happen. But why the heck does it happen?

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So here's what's going on. Speakers are powered by amplifiers,

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which send a voltage to your speaker drivers that make them vibrate in a certain way,

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thereby producing sounds that you can enjoy. Amplifiers obviously need power and lots of them,

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especially ones inside mainstream consumer electronics like phones and powered speakers

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that you can just plug into the wall have built-in power supplies that can only provide so much juice.

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I mean, try driving a pair of huge floor-standing speakers

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with a tiny headphone amp and see how far you get.

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Now, exactly how much power your amplifier will need

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to produce a certain sound will depend on what the sound is.

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Louder sounds think heavy drum beats or a singer forcefully hitting those high notes

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or cymbals being fanged together. Oh, not those ones, these ones.

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Those require more energy than other noises. If the energy required by the audio signal

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is more than your amp can handle because its power supply is too weak,

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clipping is the result. The reason it's called clipping

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is that if you plug your setup into an oscilloscope, you can see the signals that have a high amplitude,

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meaning that they require a lot of power, are clipped off with the result being

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that the waveform will be flat on top because the high power signals couldn't be amplified enough.

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So in place of the higher power portions of the audio track,

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you instead get distortions and crackling since the actual signal isn't reaching your speakers

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as intended and clipping isn't just annoying to your ears.

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It can actually damage your speakers. When clipping occurs, amplifiers often end up pushing

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too much high frequency energy to your speakers, meaning that the tweeter, the part responsible

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for producing higher sounds is especially at risk

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for permanent damage if there's lots of clipping present.

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Some speakers have limiting circuits built in to prevent damage from clipping,

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but even if your speakers aren't at risk, you don't want your audio to sound terrible.

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So how do you avoid clipping? The easiest and most obvious way to do this

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is to just turn down the volume. This will prevent the load on your amplifier's power supply

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from getting too high, specifically if you are using a smaller or cheaper set of speakers

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or a gadget that simply can't handle high power. But let's say you're using a more elaborate setup

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where you're buying components like speakers and amplifiers separately.

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Your best bet here is to find a set of speakers that can produce the volume you want,

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often listed as the sound pressure level, and then choosing an amplifier and power supply

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that can provide more than the listed power requirements

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of the speaker. Also be sure to check out the impedance rating

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of both your speakers and your amps and be sure that they're matched up.

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Ratings are often given as a range. So as long as there's some overlap, you should be good to go.

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And pro tip, if you're trying to fine tune, especially your car audio,

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you can actually hook up an oscilloscope, play a test tone, and see at what level

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the amplifier starts clipping the waveform, meaning you can just turn down the gain on the amp

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until the waveform looks good at whatever specific volume you want to be your max.

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This way your speakers won't clip, no matter what you're playing, and you won't damage them or your ears.

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Of course, if you don't want to do all this, you can just listen to AirPods,

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but don't turn those up too loud either because they just sound bad.

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I said it. So thanks for watching guys. If you liked this video, give us a thumbs up,

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hit subscribe, and be sure to hit us up in the comment section with your suggestions

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for topics that we should cover in the future.