I've actually got my eye on these things...
eBay.ca: SOUNDSTREAM XTS6.9 6X9 200 WATT RMS 4-WAY SPEAKERS NEW! (item 250140695915 end time 15-Jul-07 07:35:04 EDT)
Good price with decent specs. What do you guys think?

I'm going to the US for over a week, so I will have a 7-day personal exemption of $750 worth of goods I can bring back.

24 hours lets you bring back $50 worth of good, and they recently changed the exemption for 48 hours in the past month or so from $200 up to $400.

 

Ha, I like that wattage claim......200 w rms into a tiny little voicecoil....one that is smaller than subwoofers that have former twice as large...... Power Acoustic marketing at it's best. Sorry, I had to.

 

LOL. I read this and all i think is "distortion"...

Hope you get good service from eBay!

 

Are you saying that 200W RMS is too much for a 1.5" voice coil?

 

My scope didn't show any distortion when setting the gains plus only the woofer blew, not the mid or tweeter.

The amp has a maximum output of 150W/channel and I was only setting it to a max of 70W/channel.

I first ran into problems with the 6x9s when I played that track "About Us" from Brooke Hogan & Paul Wall. It has alot of bass and it's a sweet spot for my sub setup.

There was distortion from the 6x9's whenever the bass hit, but not from the sub, so I turned down the gains on the 6x9 amp even more after that first encounter and never turned them back up since.

 

Your mid and tweeter never blew due to the fact that they have a cap on them to keep all that damaging bottom end from getting into them. For the woofer though, you could easily have exceeded the thermal barrier in such a small voice coil, even if you stayed in the recommended power ratings. It could also have been a mechanical barrier that was broken and the result was a misaligned voicecoil. Lots of factors could have been the issue. I have found very very few 6x9's can truly handle on a consistent basis, the wattage that the marketing dept. wants stamped onto them.

 

So you agree with me that it was probably caused by overexcursion or thermal breakdown due to the bass frequencies?

Also, you never answered my previous question.
Do you believe 200W RMS is too much for the 1.5" voice coil on the SoundStream 6x9s?

When I do get new 6x9s I intend to use a cap on them instead of going with a active crossover to save some money for now, and plan to use a highpass cutoff of 80Hz. Sound about right?

 

I personaly didnt like the sound of them but up to you everyone has different hearing. thats why i said only go TS of the 6x9's

 

I think that much power to a 6x9" is way too much and will result in sss one more time. (smelly speaker syndrome). Too bad you are not keeping the Lightnings, you could take the one apart and see what they look like on the inside. A speaker blows in all cases due to too much power. Too much power will either break the thermal or mechanical barrier in a speaker. Be it clean power or distorted power, if there is too much, sss is what to expect.

A 6db slope by using a cap is a real gentle slope. Remember that frequencies are not shut off at 80 hz, they are rolled off at 6db per octave starting at the point you choose to cross them over at. This means that they will still be reproducing 40 hz (one octave lower in this case) but it will be 6db quieter.

A better option for you is to make a 12db or higher slope if you want to stay passive. This will require a cap and a coil. I would also raise that point up to the 200hz or so mark. The best option though is a active crossover that can be inserted before the amplifier. End of problems save for that much power into a rather basic speaker.

 

I need to do something about the massive gap in my mid bass frequencies.
Anything between 60-80 isn't anywhere as loud as below 60.
I was hoping the 6x9s would fill that gap.
My lowpass crossover is currently set at 120 for the RF amp on the sub.

As for the passive crossover point, WinISD shows a passive 1st order Butterworth filter would create a 3db drop at the crossover frequency, with a 6db drop by the time it reaches the next lower octave.
i.e. With a crossover point of 80Hz it would be down 3db at 80, 6db down at 40, followed by 12db down at 20.
According to this website... Car Audio - Passive Crossovers ...what I'm seeing in WinISD is accurate, and a 3db drop at the crossover point is to be expected and result in a 50% power reduction, followed by 75% at the next lower octave.
Meaning, 150W input will be 75W @ 80Hz and 37.5W @ 40Hz.

I'm not willing to go active crossover just yet.

It'd be nice to rip open the Lightnings and see what exactly happened to them, but I dunno how to explain that to the Walmart clerk.