Posted by Lew on October 01, 2003 at 12:56:35:
In Reply to: Re: Thermal stability of Mills MRB-12 resistors posted by Matt Rogers on October 01, 2003 at 12:15:44:
I can't imagine what "heat does to the music". No, indeed. Technically, the music that gets
to the speaker does not pass "through" the resistor, because R is in parallel with the signal,
but I do agree that there may be other phenomena related to heating of the resistors that
could affect perceived sonics. I am trying to determine what that might be. It is not due to
drift in the value of R, however. You say that you perceived a big improvement when you
went from 100W to 300W in the power capacity of the composite resistance, and Roy seems
to support your contention that 100W (offered as standard by the factory) is suboptimal. I
assume that your amplifier is likely to be capable of more than 100W and somewhat less
than 300W output into the load presented by the SL speaker. Why would you expect a
further increase to 500W to offer any further benefits, unless you are using some behemoth
amplifier that can get beyond 300W output? Once one exhausts the known possible causes
for your (and Roy's) observation, then I do still accept on faith that you may be on to
something. It's just fun to try to figure out the why of it.