What The Hell Is This?
 

I turned down the volume a few days ago and I noticed a distortiony sound comming from my left speaker, like the midbass that is being played sounds raspy. I actually noticed it a few weeks ago but it is getting worse.

This will be my 5th speaker that has done this? I thought earlier it was do to the fact that I bought cheap equipment but apparently not.



1st time were my two eclipse subs. (ran off kenwood deck and blaupunkt amp).

2nd time was one rockfordfosgate 2 way speaker. (ran off kenwood deck)

3rd time was BOTH lightning audio 3 way speakers (walmart, haha, kenwood deck solely and then amped by a blaupunkt amp)

4th time was my orion h2 woofer. (first kenwood deck then eclipse deck, infinity amp)

5th time is my kicker components. (eclipse deck and infinity amp)



If I pull the speakers and push down on the cone it scrapes as it is pushed down (THIS PERTAINS TO ONLY THE FIRST 4, I haven't checked the kickers yet). there is no smoothness in the motion like normal subs and speakers. The only thing I could think of is that I am just horrible at overpowering my equipment??? Any ideas?????????

Sounds like clipping to me. Fried voice coils.

It's a vc on it's way out. Lightly toasted.

Overpowering itself can't be blamed. It comes down to the user IMO sorry to say especially if you managed to toast a H2 with an Infinity amp.

Make sure you are setting your gear up correctly and from there be responsible with it.

might also be rust i had some rust land on mine its a pain

Moisture maybe? Water leak somewhere?

If speakers aren't mounted properly, they can ruin a voice coil.
If they have to be forced to fit or if the panel isn't flat, that warps the basket and that stop the vc from travelling straight.

Getting loud, clipping is the easyest way to destroy a speaker. I'm a big believer in lots of power, and never ever hit clipping.

How do you toast a voicecoil without overpowering it? Clipping doesn't kill speakers; power does.

To the original poster, it's clearly a case of overpowering your products. This could be a direct result of cranking the volume too high, or setting the amplifier's gain too high in accordance with the volume.

I hadnt even put that into thought, but i honestly believe that is the problem here. I had done that once with an old MCM Electronics 10" woofer i used way back in the days and it did the same thing. It ended up being the well designed plywood box "aka. the coffin" i had used. lol You could have put 3 dead bodies in that box...but it dug real deep for a pair of 10s. I also remember getting that problem with an old 12" Orion XTRII in a frankenstein box made from 2 different boxes glued together back in the days.
....sad.....my boxes dont really look any better these days. lol

leaky doors lead to squeaky speakers, as for the subs, stop clipping them :D

clipping kills your speakers, you can blow a 300w sub with an 80w amp, when your amp is driven past its nominal power, it will spike its amperage as a result of lowering its voltage, and it will heat up your voice coils causing them to cook.

You can also damage speakers that have rms ratings way over your deck's max output this way if you pin your deck and don't listen for clipping.