Hi everyone, let me start of by saying I am new to the forum. I have used this forum many times to answer questions, but this is the first time I will actually make a post. I appreciate all of those who take time out of their day to answer questions on here. Long story so bare with me... About a year and a half ago I purchased a Yamaha HTR-5540 AV Receiver. Four months later I purchased 2 Wharfedale Diamond 8.3 mains, a Wharfedale diamond 8 center and Wharfedale diamond 8.2 surrounds with a Velodyne 10" Sub. I was initially very happy with the system, but about a week afterwards the woofer on one of the Diamond 8.3s blew. I promplty contacted Wharfedale and received very excellent and fast service and a new speaker was at my door 2 days later. I had the new speaker for about 4 days when the woofer on the other 8.3 blew. Again, I contacted customer service and received a new speaker. A month later another dead woofer. This time intead of sending me a replacement speaker they just send me a replacement woofer which I installed myself. Everything seemed to be doing fine until about a month ago another dead woofer in the 8.3. Finally fed up with the Wharfedales (thinking it was a quality control issue) I decided to purchase a NEW Infinity TSS-1100 system that I got a very good deal on. I loved the Wharfedales but I am also moving to an apartment this summer and would like smaller speakers. After having the Infinity system for around a week I went to play some music and my Yamaha receiver kept turning off due to a short curcuit, when I turned the receiver back on I kept getting check sp wire message. I traced the problem to the front right channel speaker and low and behold . . . both midrange drivers in the new infinity were DEAD. Now I am convinced this could be a problem with my reciever, so I have purchased a new one. Admittedly I DO listen to my music quite loud at times, but I know my limits and when distrotion becomes a problem I turn it down immedietly (and when distortion is causing problems aren't the tweeters usually the first to go? I have never blown a tweeter). 5 dead woofers in a year on one receiver is quite a track record. My question is does anyone have any clue what could be causing this, or could it be some other factor I am unaware of?
Thanks for sticking with me I know my question is complex and my post was long.
Scott
J. Vigne
Unregistered guest
Posted on
If you listen at loud volumes you can drive the woofer, and occasionally the mid, to the level where the voice coil: a) overheats and welds itself to the pole piece closing the gap and rendering the speaker dead; or, b) drive the woofer to the point where the voice coil actually leaves the linear portion of its operating range and either bangs against the back of the driver assembly or pops out of the gap and causes a burr which will quickly disable the mechanism. Both of these can happen long before clipping the amplifier. They are more likely to happen with smaller woofers that are fed a bass heavy signal. If you use tone controls you are likely to make the matter worse.
If there are no indications of a problem with the receiver, you will either have to learn to live with less volume and bass or get more efficient speakers with an oversized, long throw voice coil on the drivers. The third alternative is to buy a subwoofer and hook it up to remove the bass frequencies from your smaller speakers.
Hi Vigne thanks for your reponse I currently have a Velodyne 10" subwoofer. My receiver is set to feed all the bass to it (speaker size set to small, bass sent to subwoofer) so my mains should be getting very little. I have the treble and bass on the receiver at their default posistions. I believe it is possible volume could hae caused this, but I am still somewhat skeptical. When the Wharfedale woofers would go out it was due to faulty internal wiring, and not voice coil overheating. As for the Infinity I cant get inside the cabinet to check, so I am unsure what caused it to die.