UH-OH. Blown LSiC Driver!

Altmanfan

Dang it. In the middle of viewing a movie I smelled something burning and immediately shut down all components. I was afraid the TV was burning up. Nope. Everything looked and smelled fine with the TV. The burning smell dissipated before I could pinpoint where it was coming from. SO.....I cranked back up and couldn't hear the movie dialogue.

Inspection of the LSiC revealed no sound coming from the right-hand (higher-frequency?) driver. That's where the burned smell was coming from, too.

So, my question is.......is this unusual? I've had the LSi's for about a month-and-a-half. The only change I've made was replacing my Onkyo receiver (which I was using as a preamp with an Outlaw 7700 amp) with the Outlaw 990 preamp a few days ago. Been working fine until now. Is there any chance that has anything to do with the LSiC driver blowing?

Crutchfield will ship out a replacement, but the tech support guy said they almost never have any problems with the LSiC. (Of course, I also had to have an LSi25 on the same shipment replaced because the first one's sub was non-functional).

Any thoughts, guys?

(oh.....Cobalt speaker cables and Outlaw interconnects, by the way)

Frank Z

Probably just a random failure. It's a pain to have to wait for a replacement but it beats the hell outta buying a new speaker.

disneyjoe7

It sounds like the amp is bad / blown channel DC voltage out.

Altmanfan

disneyjoe7 wrote:

It sounds like the amp is bad / blown channel DC voltage out.

Sorry to be dense, but I'm sort of a newbie.......it's the amp, not the speaker?

danger boy

i think he meant that there may be a problem with that channel on your amp. but it does sound like the center speaker blew like you thought. It happens some times.. my friend cranks his all the time. and had blown two center channel tweeters before.

disneyjoe7

Yes I understand your speaker is bad Sounds like you where sitting down watching a movie, smelling something bad. An amp should only have ac voltage out / never DC (only in small Milli volt range for other electronic tech out there I know) So if the amp channel is blown then yes your driver died also.
Be careful to watch new speaker when you get it replaced if it moves in or out and stays there with no music / audio playing then the amp is given you DC out also // BAD BAD BAD Blown amp.

Altmanfan

disneyjoe7 wrote:

Yes I understand your speaker is bad Sounds like you where sitting down watching a movie, smelling something bad. An amp should only have ac voltage out / never DC (only in small Milli volt range for other electronic tech out there I know) So if the amp channel is blown then yes your driver died also.
Be careful to watch new speaker when you get it replaced if it moves in or out and stays there with no music / audio playing then the amp is given you DC out also // BAD BAD BAD Blown amp.

Will do.

One more question. The left-hand driver still works perfectly. If the problem was the amp, wouldn't BOTh drivers have gone out, not just the right-hand one?

disneyjoe7

Well it depends on how the crossover is designed, so if the left driver has a cap in-line in the crossover then no. The cap will not pass the DC voltage.

wingnut4772

I would give Outlaw a call and just run it by them if you are not sure. Their customer service is the absolute best (really) and they will be more than happy to go over any possibilities with you.

disneyjoe7

Good call Wingnut, I'm wondering about the amp on how that speaker died.

Altmanfan

I'll call Outlaw to discuss first thing tomorrow.

As I understand it, the LSiC has a cap in the high-pass crossover, and uses a cascade array to crossover the low-pass drivers at 2400hz and 200hz, respectively. How would that affect DC blockage?

Altmanfan

Thanks for the responses, by the way!

disneyjoe7

Altmanfan wrote:

I'll call Outlaw to discuss first thing tomorrow.

As I understand it, the LSiC has a cap in the high-pass crossover, and uses a cascade array to crossover the low-pass drivers at 2400hz and 200hz, respectively. How would that affect DC blockage?

DC direct current is in AC terms 0hz so anything above 0hz is AC / or in our case Audio. Hope this helps

Joey_V

You could always hook up the LSic to one of your main channels and see if the drivers all work.

disneyjoe7

I would've said that but he needs to check with no music / dead air / nothing and see if drive is forced in / out as I stated before. Caution here because if driver died because of amp then new drive would too if not caught in time.