Klipsch 2.1 - Why did my speaker melt?

H

hardc0re

Gawd
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Sep 19, 2006
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My Klipsch 2.1 system's left satellite started to buzz extremely loud intermittently , followed by a *very* disgusting smell. Upon further inspection I found the tweeter had warped. The right speaker and sub work fine though. What can cause this to occur all of a sudden, it was working fine for years. All That changed was I moved it to a different location in the house, is there grounding issues or anything with this set??
 
the speaker was connected the the sub, aren't there safeguards to prevent that sort of thing from happening? I'm surprised it's just the left channel.
 
The sub is irrelevant. The speakers are hooked up the speaker's amp that just happens to be bolted to the sub.

Watts = Volts x Amperes.

For whatever reason, your signal likely had too much voltage and your amp could not produce enough current. While you get just as much power, high voltage signals causes voice coils to melt because the metal coil does not create a large enough gap to cool off (I don't understand this myself, just what I've heard from the president of Ascend Audio). A voice coil can take almost an unlimited amount of amperes though, so you can produce the same amount of output, even significantly more, with a much cooler running voice coil.

So interestingly enough, Watts != Watts.
 
astrallite said:
For whatever reason, your signal likely had too much voltage and your amp could not produce enough current. While you get just as much power, high voltage signals causes voice coils to melt because the metal coil does not create a large enough gap to cool off (I don't understand this myself, just what I've heard from the president of Ascend Audio). A voice coil can take almost an unlimited amount of amperes though, so you can produce the same amount of output, even significantly more, with a much cooler running voice coil.

So interestingly enough, Watts != Watts.
Click to expand...

Electric Fail

P = I^2*R

Thus the power dissipated by the load is proportionate to the square of the current going through it.


OP:
I'd being willing to bet that your tweeter developed a short. The buzz you heard is the sound of arcing. A sufficiently low impedance short would allow for quite a bit of heat to be generated over something not designed to dissipate it, resulting in meltage.

I'd be willing to bet replacing the speaker would take care of you issue. Just to be safe though, compare DC voltage across both left and right terminals. It should be the same on both sides (ideally 0), but if its noticeably higher on the side that burnt out you amp probably has issues.
 
ecmaster, your explanation sounds more plausible. However I'm also thinking, would voltage spikes cause that sort of thing to happen?
 
Potentially. A high enough voltage could overcome insulation and arc (assuming that the buzzing you heard was arcing).

If it wasn't an insulation failure but rather a unsafe amp failure, one would hope that the fuses would have burnt out. I dont think its too likely though that the amp went out and only managed to fry one speaker. I'm not as familiar with the 2.1s but on the 5.1s each channel gets its own daughterboard, and all the power regulation occurs before that split.

It could also have been environmental (humidity, spill, etc) or a defect that caused the insulation to become degraded.
 
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