tweeter problem

schmilnik

hey guys I have the rti 6s and i think i blew the tweeter. Their is a static sound coming from my 6s and my csi5. So i sent them in today to polk to have them look at them. Is this common and what could I have done to do this. I was running the rti6s the csi5 and my sub through a hk avr335. Thanks for any help!

Jim Shearer

Can you give us an idea about how loud the system was playing & for how long?

The majority of blown drivers result from running the amp into clipping, which means the speakers are receiving square waves that endup w/ too much power into the tweeters. (And AVRs w/ switching power supplies have little or no 'head-room'.) It takes a lot of clean power to blow a good driver.

Cheers, Jim

F1nut

I agree with Jim and I'll bet you had the tones controls tweaked too.

schmilnik

Jim Shearer wrote:

Can you give us an idea about how loud the system was playing & for how long?

The majority of blown drivers result from running the amp into clipping, which means the speakers are receiving square waves that endup w/ too much power into the tweeters. (And AVRs w/ switching power supplies have little or no 'head-room'.) It takes a lot of clean power to blow a good driver.

Cheers, Jim

I was listening to it aout 3/4 volume and for about 30mins. And the tones and everyting was equalized. And what do you mean by head room? Thanks for you help.

Schwingding

I have a brand new pair of RTi10s with a blown tweeter as well. I have not played anything at all very loudly, to be totally honest, no where anywhere close to my system's capabilities. I'm very surprised, but know it is not an unheard of situation. Tweeter will replace the whole unit with no questions, but still....

F1nut

I was listening to it aout 3/4 volume and for about 30mins.

And there we have the answer. Turn it the eff down and turn off the tone controls or at least leave them FLAT.

EricBurg

I would say that if you have 3 speakers with blown tweeters, then you had the volume way too high for you amplifier to handle the signal.

Eric

univera

schmilnik wrote:

I was listening to it aout 3/4 volume and for about 30mins. And the tones and everyting was equalized. And what do you mean by head room? Thanks for you help.

Power in reserve, for large cymbol crashes, etc. Dynamic, explosive portions of a performance will require your amp section to reach down for some reserves. If you are already maxing out your your amp's capabilities (at 3/4 volume, you are and are likely distorting) and the music requires something dynamic, then you have nothing in reserve. Even if your amp section has protective circuitry that "rolls off" the signal to keep it from sending damaging wave forms, it still has nothing left to give at that kind of volume setting.

Dedicated amps generally have more headroom and some designs are efficient at only giving the music the amount of power/current necessary rather than the whole capability all at once. This keeps the equipment running cooler as well as saves some juice for parts of the performance that require more draw. This may not be a perfect analogy, but it is similar to VTEC engines where only part of the engine is churning but it can run at full strength when called upon because it previously was only using what was needed at the moment.

Your amp at that level is using every bit of what is required and is likely lacking what is truly needed, therefore compromising the signal quality and sound and concurrently damaging your speakers. The only way for it to keep playing is to modify the wave forms of the music as it can't reproduce them accurately. Lot's of heat may be building up. After that point, your unit may clip or cutoff. This is a layman's explanation, and the only way I can explain it. As always, there are more experienced members, so if I am off base at all, I will be corrected.

Most people recommend keeping the volume knob at 11:00 or so. You are usually adding distortion as you approach the 12 spot.