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4 Replies Last post: Dec 7, 2009 1:58 AM by marcohendel

Fusion Impedance Monitoring

Nov 20, 2009 6:16 AM

Click to view marcohendel's profile marcohendel 5 posts since
Oct 6, 2009

Hello everybody,

Has someone already made any experiences with 100V speaker lInes on a AM600? We just configured a large System from our customer at the beginnig of this week and we had a few difficulties to calibrate several speaker lines. The referece Impedance value was determined at no signal present. But from the moment we played our STI test noise or an emergency message, the measurement was drifting dramatically and we got a fault... The only way to solve that problem was to raise the tolerance on a very high level. But, of course, with a high tolerance it doesn`t recognize a missing or defective speaker...

Any Ideas what this could be?

Click to view HST's profile HST 153 posts since
Jan 22, 2008
1. Re: Fusion Impedance Monitoring Nov 23, 2009 7:55 AM

Hello!

What kind of tolerance did you allow?

I think a tolerance of less than 10% is unrealistic to get.

As a matter of fact, the impedance changes when the voice coils do heat up. This is called Power Compression.


Bye

HST

Click to view marcohendel's profile marcohendel 5 posts since
Oct 6, 2009
2. Re: Fusion Impedance Monitoring Nov 24, 2009 5:32 AM
in response to: HST

Hi HST,

Sometimes we had to go higher than 70%!

But I think we gonna have the Fault, or at least a possibility... The installer used a speaker type with 2 Drivers in one box to realize A/B Wiring without using more Boxes... So it might be possible that the running alarm and measure tones influences the impedance of the second driver in the same Box. That would be an answer why the Imedance drifts parallel to the output volume... We still have to check that !

Click to view MBonsoir's profile MBonsoir 55 posts since
Jan 15, 2008
3. Re: Fusion Impedance Monitoring Nov 25, 2009 2:12 AM
in response to: marcohendel

Hello Marco:

Your fist post raises a number of points, so I'll try to cover them all one at the time.

Firstly, you said that "The reference Impedance value was determined at no signal present.", and if this is true, it will certainly explain why you're experiencing problems.

If you are intending on using the Impedance Monitoring feature as a method to determine a fault on a speaker line, you must first achieve a reliable and accurate impedance reading to use as Alarm Baseline Data. To do this, you must inject the amplifier with some signal.
I would recommend a sine wave tone of 19.5 KHz at around -24dBFS, as a quieter level may also result in inaccurate readings.
The load monitoring band should have its centre frequency set also at 19.5 KHz, and its bandwidth should be of 20Hz.

This way, you're concentrating on a narrow band of frequencies, and your measurements should not be disturbed by program material like paging or background music. Also, the frequency is too high to be audible on a 100V line system, and should therefore not bother anyone.

Of course, and as HST correctly pointed out, you should set your Tolerance, probably to something like 10% or so. This will be of course dependant on your individual circumstances, as factors like temperature will change the impedance measured on the line. Also, a 10% shift on impedance measured on a line with 20 speakers is very different to a 10% shift on a line with 5 speakers.

And this brings us neatly to the last point, which is your comment of "with a high tolerance it doesn`t recognize a missing or defective speaker".

I do not wish to enter a debate and I'm well aware this topic has been hotly debated on many occasions; but employing impedance monitoring as a method to discover whether a single speaker is defective or missing on a 100V line is a bit like counting grains of salt while blindfolded relying just in your sense of touch.

It can be done, but only under certain circumstances.

The reality is that if you have a number of speakers on a 100V line, the changes on the line impedance when a single speaker is disconnected may be quite small. Small enough, in fact, to be smaller than the changes in line impedance that will naturally occur on the line throughout the day.
Therefore, you could be caught in the impossible position of needing to set a tolerance of 5% or less in order to determine whether a speaker has been disconnected, but the temperature changes between day and night cause a shift on impedance readings of 10%, forcing you to set a higher tolerance to avoid false alarms.
If this is the case, your only solution is to reduce the amount of speakers on that line so that the removal of one of them causes a change in impedance that is noticeable enough to offer a reliable parameter to detect failure from.

I hope this helps,

Martin

Click to view marcohendel's profile marcohendel 5 posts since
Oct 6, 2009
4. Re: Fusion Impedance Monitoring Dec 7, 2009 1:58 AM
in response to: MBonsoir

Hello Martin,

thank you very much for your detailed answer.

Of course, Line Monitoring is a special matter, especially in a 100V system... I luckily had the chance to make a few tests in the first official "fusion part" of an Audia training in Beaverton. :) And at the 8 Ohm load with the monitor speaker, there was no drifting at all. So it seems to be the difficult condition of an 100V speaker line and sure, the 2 speakers in one cabinet makes it even harder to get a clean impedance readout.


Best regards,

Marco