Class D gain & distortion

Audio Components
1

I have JBL LSR308 active monitors with class D amplification inside.
How much can I safely set gain (a knob on the back plate, goes from 1-10) without running into significant class D distortion, be it audible or not? Of course this depends on the amps, but these speakers were around 650$ when I bought them new 5 years ago so obviously they don’t have especially high quality class D amps.

I keep my DAC feeding them at max volume (and obviously the source volume too) so then I have to keep the monitors at gain setting 5.5 at most, to not get too loud. I guess that’s fine considering the issue of distortion, I’m just interested where the margins go for when Class D starts distorting enough to matter.

2

How high you can set the gain before noticeable distortion happens depends on a few factors. You could set the gain at 10 and use your DAC at a low output and they would be very quiet. Or you could feed them 10+ volts (non pro audio this is rare) and they would be clipping with the gain at 1.

You will hear when they start to distort. The drivers will most likely go into duress before the amp.

Short answer. As long as it sounds good you’re fine.

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