SDA SRS drivers popping at high volume

heiney9

joeparaski wrote:

Heiny....any suggestions as to which cd I should listen to to make the Polks "shine"?

I just went and pushed the cones.....if I push evenly on both sides, there is no sound. If I push on one side only, there is a scraping sound on ALL of them (I would think that it is normal when pushing on one side only).

I took some pictures and I'll post them (as soon as I figure out the best way to do so).

Well all our choices (collectively) are personal. Unfortuneatly one thing that doesn't get discussed too often is in addition to nice equipment, good cables and clean power is that the source music can be a big limiting factor on how the system performs. There is nothing wrong w/ Madonna; I listen to her myself. It's just her type of club dance music is not ideal for any system at high volume.

It would be impossible for me to tell you what to listen too. We all have to be aware that some recordings regardless of type/genre of music are going to sound excellent and others aren't because of how they were recorded and mastered. I suspect once you get the DAC in the mix this is going to become much more of an issue. A good Dac will expose many flaws in a recording that weren't as apparent before. But, a well recorded cd will sound even better and give you that good feeling inside.

Check out the SDA Playlist sticky thread at the top of the Vintage Speaker forum page. This will give you a much braoder idea of what people think sound good on SDA's.

H9

P.s. I'm working on my own dbl disc of reference recordings which I think sound spectacular. My demo disc runs across all musical genre's. You could try soemthing like that.

joeparaski

Thanks H9...I'll try and "train" my ear and I'll check out that playlist.

Ok, trying to copy and paste a picture here doesn't work. Clicking on "insert picture" seems to require a url to the image. Am I supposed to upload to the web and then link to the picture? There must be an easy way to post a quick pic here as others have done.

heiney9

Click Manage attachments, a seperate window will pop up, in the upper left it will say "upload file from computer", look to the right where it says "browse" click that and use it to access the area where the pic stored on your computer, when you've found it click the file name and then click save, then click the upload button in the pop-up window, wait about 20 sec and scroll down using the bar on the right hand side of the pop-up window and click "close this window" and then click "submit reply".

H9

Zen Dragon

joeparaski wrote:

Now as you know I had the 2.3tl's sitting in the corner unused. QUOTE]

Damn! Couple of 2.3TL's just laying around huh? Life is tough.

heiney9

Yes, he's got some 3.1tl's also.

F1nut

reeltrouble1 wrote:

If the SRS have blown drivers there is a reason. Think about it and the reasons why.

Yep!

joeparaski

Ok, here is a pic of my setup (assuming it worked).

joeparaski

Ah cool, it worked. The audio rack on the right has a large opening because it's still missing 2 amplifiers...one to bi-amp the 2.3's and one for the rear speakers.

1st rack from the bottom.....Samson s-1000 amp, Phase 700B, Phase 400, SAE electronic crossover, SAE 100 wpc, SAE parametric eq, SAE graphic eq, Monster 3500, SAE pre-amp, Sony cdp.

2nd rack from the bottom.....SAE 300 wpc (2 open spaces) SAE parametric eq, ....and a bunch of other stuff, some of which is not used and will be removed once I finalize everything.

Polkersince85

Now we know your issue, you're sucking up all the stray EMF from the universe with all that gear.:(

Zen Dragon

You know, I always envisioned heaven looked something like that......
Only with lots of micro-brewed beer and sexually adventurous women as well.

heiney9

joeparaski wrote:

Ok, here is a pic of my setup (assuming it worked).

Where's the dance floor??? Just kidding . Nice, very nice.

H9

george daniel

Spongebob is the man:eek:

Tour2ma

joeparaski wrote:

If I push on one side only, there is a scraping sound on ALL of them...

DON'T do that!

Ricardo

Joe,

Pushing the passive radiator enough to make all drivers move should be enough to tell if there's a bad driver; if you hear anything it will be easy to find the bad one/ones....

Those drivers never gave me any problem....as mentioned above, you must try to find the basic cause before continuing pushing them that hard; I remember you mentioned you fried an amp...maybe that did it.

Anyway, I hope you find the issue and fix it so that you can continue killing your ears

joeparaski

F1nut wrote:

Highly likely. Another issue may be that those amps just don't control the drivers very well. FYI, the polyswitches have nothing to do with the mids, only the tweeters and tweeters don't make popping noises.

I've pushed my 2.3TL's at times to between 110dB to 115dB with a peak of 117dB with no problems other than my ears ringing.

C-weighted I got the popping sound at 110 db's. It was coming from the SRS and not the 2.3's. I'll retest later with the individual pairs.

Here's another thing that bothers me.....the meters on the left channel go higher than the right and the sound is also louder from the left than the right with the balance in the center. If I switch to "reverse stereo" on the pre-amp, I get the opposite effect. What should I look for to resolve this?

F1nut

joeparaski wrote:

Here's another thing that bothers me.....the meters on the left channel go higher than the right and the sound is also louder from the left than the right with the balance in the center. If I switch to "reverse stereo" on the pre-amp, I get the opposite effect. What should I look for to resolve this?

A new pre amp and get rid of those EQ's. Seriously, all that gear is old enough by now to be having issues. It might be prudent to have them all checked out.

You do know about the infamous "Flame" Linear gear, right?

dorokusai

That's most likely a internal gain issue....not a fire hazard.

schwarcw

I think you have the 2.3's reversed. The SDA side is the one with four drivers. There has been a lot of discussion about this on the Forum. Are the 2.3's marked left and right?

F1nut

Those are 2.3TL's, not 2.3's and they are in the correct places.

schwarcw

Thanks Jesse;) I'll try and remember the TL's are different

Zen Dragon

joeparaski wrote:

Here's another thing that bothers me.....the meters on the left channel go higher than the right and the sound is also louder from the left than the right with the balance in the center. If I switch to "reverse stereo" on the pre-amp, I get the opposite effect. What should I look for to resolve this?

An audio amplifier contains multiple internal amplifer devices wired in parallel to achieve the high output power. There can be 8,10,12 or more devices on each channel. Over time and hard usage sometimes some of the internal amplifier devices fail. Because they are wired in parallel the unti will continue to work because the other devices are still good, only with a lower power output. Lets say each internal amp on each channel provided 20 watts of power, and you had 10 on each side for a 200Watt per channel amp. You'd lose approximately 20W of output power for each amp that failed. That is an oversimplification, but roughly true.
If you are elctronic savy, you must open the unit and remove each internal device to test it. Because they are wired in parallel they can not be tested in circuit.
If you are not electronic savy this may be a job for the shop.

gyusher

Zen Dragon wrote:

If you are not electronic savy this may be a job for the shop.

In the mean time use your balance control. . . It is not unusual to need to use it for a slight adjustment bring both sides to the same level. . . I know how you feel but it may be your only option. .

I had an amp years ago that needed this. . .I had it in the shop time after time only to be told it was OK. . . I used that amp for years with the balance cocked slightly towards the left channel. At one point I pulled it off and re-centered it so it would stop driving me crazy. . . .

min888

Mine does the same, but I put too much bass into the speakers. The funny thing is that it seems that the left side does it more and I think only 1 or 2 of the 8 6.5" does it. Also I wanted to post in the FS forum but can't create a new one did they change the rules? I just want to ask people here is 200 a good deal for a SRS 3.1?

joeparaski

Zen Dragon wrote:

An audio amplifier contains multiple internal amplifer devices wired in parallel to achieve the high output power. There can be 8,10,12 or more devices on each channel. Over time and hard usage sometimes some of the internal amplifier devices fail. Because they are wired in parallel the unti will continue to work because the other devices are still good, only with a lower power output. Lets say each internal amp on each channel provided 20 watts of power, and you had 10 on each side for a 200Watt per channel amp. You'd lose approximately 20W of output power for each amp that failed. That is an oversimplification, but roughly true.
If you are elctronic savy, you must open the unit and remove each internal device to test it. Because they are wired in parallel they can not be tested in circuit.
If you are not electronic savy this may be a job for the shop.

Hey Zen, thanks for the tips. I am going to do some more testing to try and pinpoint which piece of equipement is causing the imbalance. By process of elimination, I should eventually pinpoint the problem.

heiney9

joeparaski wrote:

Hey Zen, thanks for the tips. I am going to do some more testing to try and pinpoint which piece of equipement is causing the imbalance. By process of elimination, I should eventually pinpoint the problem.

When equip get older caps dry up, resistors open, relays start to fail, etc. It's just a matter of age and taking stuff in to get it checked is par for the course for the age of your equipment.

H9

joeparaski

F1nut wrote:

A new pre amp and get rid of those EQ's. Seriously, all that gear is old enough by now to be having issues. It might be prudent to have them all checked out.

You do know about the infamous "Flame" Linear gear, right?

Bi F1nut, I did send most of my gear to the shop. But I did not advise them of any specific problem, I just told them to go through it and clean them up and look for potential problems.

I really don't want to get rid of any stuff despite their age. Perhaps one day I'll put together a modern system but for now this will have to do.

I'm not sure what you mean about "Flame" Linear.....were there issues at some time which caused these units to burn up?

heiney9

joeparaski wrote:

Bi F1nut, I did send most of my gear to the shop. But I did not advise them of any specific problem, I just told them to go through it and clean them up and look for potential problems.

I really don't want to get rid of any stuff despite their age. Perhaps one day I'll put together a modern system but for now this will have to do.

I'm not sure what you mean about "Flame" Linear.....were there issues at some time which caused these units to burn up?

If you like your gear keep it, but realize it may need a little TLC once in awhile. For many of us the few processors, in the signal path the better, that doesn't mean you have to do it that way. Yes, some generations Phase Linear tended to self destruct and burn up. No flames literally that I know about, but some weak design area's. I've read about them but can't be specific. I guess Google it if you need to.

H9

heiney9

Joe, here's a link to a Phase Linear website with some pretty good info. Of course it's all positive . But it may give you a beetr idea of where your stuff fits in the lineage of PL.

http://hometown.aol.com/PhaseTek/

H9

Zen Dragon

joeparaski wrote:

Bi F1nut, I did send most of my gear to the shop. But I did not advise them of any specific problem, I just told them to go through it and clean them up and look for potential problems.

I realize you don't want to give the shop a free ride to start finding problems, but you might have mentioned your output power seemed a little low on one channel. It gives them a place to start. They may find some failed, or failing amplifiers, and may recommend replacing large electrolytic caps which dry up and can lose performance over time. If you have the money, the caps are usually a worthy investment if you plan on hanging on to the equipment for a while.

ND13

Joe, what the hell happened to that TV in your picture????