ok i have 2 kicker L5 12 dvc a 1200 and a 1 farad stinger cap and when i turn it up and play loud for about 30 minutes i start to get a smell that like plastic burning im thinking its because ive got 4 guage wiring and need 2 guage but could it be something else?
i got that same smell... any blew a total of 4 subs in a week on differenet setups... its burning voice coils.. i wish i woulda knew; i had them fully cranked)
i have the same problem with my Fi Q.. someone will probably say that its just its a new sub blah blah blah but on my arsenal it did the same. One night i had the back seat out and it was dark and i saw a spark and my amp was sparking at one of the terminals at high volumes. anyone know why??
Sometimes subs and even interior speakers can stink when their breaking in, every set of JBL GTIs, Polk SRs, and JL ZRs stink to high hell for the first day or so, same thing with the Power Series JBL Subs, W7s, MTX Ported Boxes, etc. etc. That smell is more similar, but not as acidic as (give me a break, it's late) a blown speaker smell.
Check all of your electrical connections, make sure wires aren't heating up, and check your grounds. Definetly check your grounds a couple of times.
A burnt coil smell and new speaker smell are two different things. I doubt that is the case here, but it IS possible, depending on the manufacturing process the speaker maker uses.
Multiple MECP certifications and three decades of combined experience kind of preclude the idea that we're simply turning things up too loud at my shop.
i just installed my kappa perfects and had a werid smell and after a day of or limited use it was gone now im poun ding everywhere o and by the way thoes subs are way under rated im pusing 100 rms to 2 of them all day and they sound "perfect"
Burnt out Voice coils on loudspeakers are usually caused by using a low powered amplifier ... People often turn up the volume to the point where severe signal clipping takes place ... Very severe clipping of the signal removes a lot of the information from the music and basically turns it into square-waves which are pulses of DC as opposed to the AC that the speaker would normally handle ... I appreciate that square waves have all the odd harmonics to infinity, but they are still pulses of DC, which is damaging to the voice coil ... The DC will heat up the coils and eventually will burn them out unless the heat can be dissipated quickly and not allowed to build up ... Some voice coils are liquid cooled which helps to get rid of the waste heat ... Significantly more problems are caused by Low Power Amplifiers feeding High Power Speakers than High Power Amplifiers feeding Low Powered Speakers ... Clipping can also be caused by wiring that is too thin to supply the current required from the battery to the amplifier ... 100 watts r.m.s per channel needs 16 Amps from the battery or alternator assuming that the amplifier is 100% efficient ... As amplifiers are less than 100% efficient, the amplifier itself heats up and in some cases the efficiency can be as low as 50% ...This would take 32 Amps from your Alternator to provide 100 Watts per channel ... Class A amplifiers are the least efficient though they can sound better than the class AB or class B ... Modern class B amplifiers would be my personal choice due to their efficiency ... Obviously the wiring and the fuse should be capable of carrying this current ... Bear in mind that some speakers are not as efficient as others and would need much more power to sound the same as an efficient speaker ... All amplifiers need to have a means of removing waste heat, usually just convection cooling ... After all, you wouldn't put a 200 Watt light bulb inside the dashboard of the car without a means of cooling it ... It is easy to hear when distortion occurs on a high-fi system ... As you turn up the volume the sound gets to the point where it really sounds loud ... What you are hearing is distortion creeping in ... If you turn up the volume on a cheap transistor radio it sounds very loud, even though it is only a few hundred milliwatts of power ... This is due to the distortion caused usually by clipping ... So, the answer is thick supply cables, A good alternator and efficient high power amplifiers with good cooling plus efficient speakers ... A top quality sound system should never sound loud but should still be able to produce realistic volume levels ... There should not be any hint of harshness in the music as this is a sign of clipping.
