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Why do my speakers keep failing?

3K views 52 replies 18 participants last post by  LBaudio 
#1 ·
So my driver side 6.5” started making some horrible noises the other day and when I pulled it to check it out I noticed the surround is separating from the cone. This will be the third time in the last 3 years that I’ve had a mid fail on me because of the surround coming apart. Each set of mids has been around 300$ so it’s not like I’m buying cheap stuff. The last set was a pair of hertz.

It seems like they just start coming apart at around the 1 year mark. Conveniently right after the warranties are up I might add!! Is this normal? Am I pushing them too hard? I’m tired off constantly having the replace mids and it’s getting expensive so I like to figure this out.
 
#3 ·
Yep, you're pushing them too hard. First of all, you should learn to listen for their distortion when they are reaching high excursion. Second of all, make sure you set a safe high pass filter for them, at the levels you must be listening at, go with 80-100hz to keep them from bottoming out.
 
#4 ·
I had them set at 100-2.5k so they shouldn’t of been going too low. I set my amps with a dmm, although I think i remember giving the mids a extra lil gain because they didn’t sound right.

Guess I just need to keep things turned down a lil bit. I honestly couldn’t hear any distortion from them but I always have my idmax pounding away so that’s probably making it hard to hear. I just found it strange every pair sounds and works great for about a year but sooner or later the surrounds give up.
 
#5 ·
How much power are you giving them?
 
#6 ·
200rms each. I have a jl xd600.6 on them now but it also happened when I was running my old 300/4 and they were only getting 75w rms. I know I’m running a lot more power now but honestly sound wise and how they perform there wasn’t a huge difference going from 75 to 200 watts.
 
#16 ·
Do you know the slope of the crossover that you're using? You should be fine with a 100hz HPF, unless you have a really shallow slope. Have you ever taken a look at the cones while they are playing at high listening levels? A subwoofer can do a lot to mask the distortion, so it's important that you set your gains without any other speakers playing, you need to listen for distortion, and you also need to watch the cone to see how much excursion you're getting at the levels you like to listen at.

You're observations that going from 75-200 watts didn't change things much are correct, doubling power only gives you a maximum of 3dB more output, so going from 75-200 watts only gave you about 4dB at best more SPL, it's noticeable if you push them to their limits, but you should not have noticed a huge difference.

Some of the comments about environmental issues could be worth looking into, besides being separated from the surround, are the cones warped at all? Also, how are you mounting the mids to the door, do you have a solid, flat baffle that they are attached to?

There seems to be something causing premature failure, considering how many you've ruined so far. If all of them have failed the same way by having the cone separate from the surround, then I would suspect glue failure, or over excursion, maybe a combination of both. Over excursion would mean that you're pushing them too hard, so you'd need to find a safer HPF, or keep the volume lower. Glue failure could be a manufacture defect, but if you've tried different brands, and had the same issue, that seems unlikely. Has there been rust on the magnets, terminals, and tinsel leads of the failed woofers?
 
#9 ·
I don’t think I’m clipping the head unit. It’s a pioneer deh80prs and I heard they’re good to pretty much max volume. Regardless I set my amps at 55 and never go over that. Usually listen at around 50.

Might try upping the crossover also, not sure if it will work well with me sub though.
 
#10 ·
I was just thinking, I listen to most my music streaming on Spotify and notice a lot of differences in loudness and quality. Could it just be some music is recorded louder and causes distortion? Like I can listen to like 50 songs in a row and everything is fine but then every once in a while a song will come on that distorts my speakers and I will have to turn it down or skip the song. This usually would happen on songs with lots of midbass.
 
#15 ·
Yeah I think this has a lot more to do w/ the physical environment rather than crossover points or RMS power. 6.5s are designed to run free-air, so generally the motor will bottom out before the suspension does. And the OP said the surrounds were separating rather than tearing.

Yes, moisture is the most obvious issue, but a year still seems like a short lifespan. Is there any kind of drip barrier behind/above the speaker to protect it from water (not moisture, but actual liquid water) inside the door? Are the weeping holes at the bottom of the doors clogged?
 
#13 ·
What were the other two brands?


Is environmental damage a possibility? Water intrusion on a speaker ill-suited? I had that issue recently and the surround was torn, amongst other horrors.


Audiofrog GS/GB are highly durable in doors and so is the Italian company Audio Development, based on my personal findings.


edit: Metanium beat me to it
 
#18 ·
Honestly it only rains in the spring and fall for a little bit. It does come down hard for those couple weeks but the rest of the year is either freezing temps or hot as hell. There’s not much in between. Lol

I don’t think they are getting wet at all, I never see any evidence of water. Could the extreme temp differences effect the surrounds much? I mean my speakers were just basically frozen for the last 4-5 months and now this last month they’ve been baking In the car in 80-90 degree weather and it’s only going to get hotter.
 
#21 ·
I don't think too much power is gonna be the issue, clipping maybe, but not power. Probably not heat, either, I live in Alabama and my 6 1/2's are mounted in the dash in a non air conditioned black car with a black dash. Maybe cold combined with cranking up the volume when cold. Are you using any boost on the eq? The 80prs is only clean at max volume without eq boost.
 
#23 ·
It sounds like what you want from the speakers, true spectacular impact in the range between the sub and the mid is lacking and you are pushing them to make the sound you want. That is why the little difference between 75 and 200 watts, you are already at maximum performance of the speaker. Maybe you could go to something like a 7" dynaudio,
Esotec MW 172 if you can fit it. You need more cone area and excursion capability to produce that illusive mid-bass. Floor pod enclosures with the above mentioned speakers were able to be mistaken for the subs being on, to most people, in a Honda I built. It had one soundstream 404 bridged to each pod tweeter/mid 200rms each. Customer was distortion abusive and they held up in Florida. He threw them out of the gap and stuck the voice coil :eek:, I realigned the coil into the gap and limited the throw with settings, no more problems.;)
 
#26 ·
You know, if the car is almost airtight, closing doors and the trunk could really pound those door speakers.
 
#27 ·
Is yiumsetnace fragment suggesting that the normal vents got sealed up with dynamat and the speaker is moving to XMAX when the door or trunk shuts?

That would "send them", and it sounds to me like a theory worth investigation...
 
#29 ·
That is something I would of never thought of. It is possible. I did my best to seal up the doors and I think there are vents in the hatch that got covered up. I doubt I would put any cld tiles over them but they’re definitely covered with a solid layer of ccf and mlv.

I finally pulled the speaker in question out the other day to put in a known working speaker and I was wrong. I thought I saw a tear in the surround but it’s intact. What’s making all the noise is the plastic ring around the spider rattling. The spider came completely loose and and the plastic around it is rattling against the speaker. I think this one is fixable, should just be able to glue the ring back down. Can I use super glue or should I be using a certain type of glue?
 
#30 ·
I saw E6000 was recommended by some speaker manufacturers. Great bond and flexible, good for shoe soles, too.
 
#31 ·
So you need to realize that this is the first thing that car audio hobbyists who think they know everything do ... they blow their midbass.

At this point you can either act like it was just some fluke, or you can admit that you don't know what the **** you are doing, and try to learn. I don't really care about your decision, this is just free information for you. If you want to graduate to civilized car audio society, I will advise you that your irrational, unrealistic midbass expectations symbolize your general lack of knowledge, and you should stop hammering on the best part of your system in some futile attempt to make the rest of your garbage sound good. Think carefully about that last statement, it is not personal, it is entirely intended to help.
 
#34 ·
Well that was fairly harsh. And where exactly is the help in that post? All I got from that is my system is garbage and I’m stupid. Lol

Anyway, what am I doing wrong exactly then? I don’t believe I’m over driving them. My amps are always set with dmm’s and after the gains are set I rarely listen to it at that volume. It’s closer about 75%. If I want more volume I usually just bump up my sub some. I’m honestly not even expecting a whole lot from my mids, the sub covers them up a lot anyway. It would be nice to hear them more though. I set my crossover for the mids at 100 to 2.5k and the slope is 24. It was at 12 before. The eq is flat.

This is my whole setup so you know what I’m working with. It’s in a 2005 Eclipse.

-pioneer deh80prs
-jl audio xd600.6 (200w to mids, 75w to tweeters)
-hertz ML 1600.2 mid
-massive audio ct2 tweeter
-jl audio hd750/1
-image dynamics idmax 12” in a ported box (2.5cu ft tuned @ 33hz)
-2 xs power d3400 batteries (one under hood, one in hatch)
 
#36 ·
No, I don’t have one or know anybody who has one. I even contacted a few local shops seeing if they would be able to tune my system for me and no one really seemed like they wanted to do it.

I set my amps with a dmm though so they shouldn’t be clipping.
 
#40 ·
So I was overly harsh, but that was out of respect. Sorry if that didn't come across.

It took me a long time (and some money) to learn that midbass is easy to overdo.

I don't know your install/system exactly, but probably it sounds very good, and you're down to thinking the low-midrange is the best part, and that's why this thread started.

I would advise you to go back to a conservative attitude toward the door bombers, concentrate on accurate output, etc, and focus on blending. I am just guessing and admit I have not even back-searched what you are doing so feel free to ignore this post.
 
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