Good way to debug quieter speaker?
zeddytheteddy
Posts: 3
I have a pair of RTI A1 bookshelf speakers.
Some time ago, I noticed one of pair becomes quiet upon turning on, and then the issue gets better over the next few minutes/hours.
When I contacted customer service, I mistakenly called the speaker a tweeter(I had a 2.1 system and assumed the satellites were always tweeters), so they just sent me a new tweeter replacement. I only noticed when I saw the price of the tweeters in the shipment confirmation(facepalm). After learning about terminology, I told them it was actually the woofer that's quiet and that I'm not sure if it's the woofer or crossover circuit. They immediately shipped new woofers. I'm very thankful for customer's service's generosity and lack of hassle to send me replacement parts, and I really don't want them to keep sending me replacements for parts that aren't actually broken.
I finally figured out how to detach the crimp cables to the woofers and tweeters, and this is the result of my debugging:
Setup: Amp (2.0) to Speaker pair. Speaker bridge is connected.
Tested tones:
60Hz: One is notably quieter than other.
70Hz: Harder to tell.
120Hz: Hard to tell.
1. Swapped wires between amp and speaker. Same speaker box is quiet.
2. Swapped woofers. Same speaker box is quiet.
3. Swapped amp wires connected to speakers from tweeter side of bridge to woofer side(it's a solid chunk of metal that bridges the ports, so I wasn't expecting anything. No change.
At this point, I suspect the crossover circuit is the culprit. I took it out and it looks okay(no swollen caps or burns).
Wanted to check if anyone had thoughts on whether this is enough to show a crossover issue, or if there's any further debugging I can do.
Some time ago, I noticed one of pair becomes quiet upon turning on, and then the issue gets better over the next few minutes/hours.
When I contacted customer service, I mistakenly called the speaker a tweeter(I had a 2.1 system and assumed the satellites were always tweeters), so they just sent me a new tweeter replacement. I only noticed when I saw the price of the tweeters in the shipment confirmation(facepalm). After learning about terminology, I told them it was actually the woofer that's quiet and that I'm not sure if it's the woofer or crossover circuit. They immediately shipped new woofers. I'm very thankful for customer's service's generosity and lack of hassle to send me replacement parts, and I really don't want them to keep sending me replacements for parts that aren't actually broken.
I finally figured out how to detach the crimp cables to the woofers and tweeters, and this is the result of my debugging:
Setup: Amp (2.0) to Speaker pair. Speaker bridge is connected.
Tested tones:
60Hz: One is notably quieter than other.
70Hz: Harder to tell.
120Hz: Hard to tell.
1. Swapped wires between amp and speaker. Same speaker box is quiet.
2. Swapped woofers. Same speaker box is quiet.
3. Swapped amp wires connected to speakers from tweeter side of bridge to woofer side(it's a solid chunk of metal that bridges the ports, so I wasn't expecting anything. No change.
At this point, I suspect the crossover circuit is the culprit. I took it out and it looks okay(no swollen caps or burns).
Wanted to check if anyone had thoughts on whether this is enough to show a crossover issue, or if there's any further debugging I can do.
Comments
-
Did you switch the speakers with each other? You want to see if the quiet speaker is still quiet in the spot that the good speaker was in. If it goes back to normal it is your room and you have to work on speaker placement and or room treatments. You have switched everything else but the crossover and it very well could have a failing capacitor in it or a resistor problem.
