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#233405 Jul 26, 8:30pm
Joined: Jul 2003
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2001 Toyota Celica GT
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HELP!!! This has happend with two of my headunits now..
It started after I blew my infinity components..PS: when I opened the filter box that separates the highs,and mids,(aka the distribution block) the main cap had popped in both doors's blocks:<---- btw these blew because of too much power for the set I had in my doors

Well ever since that happened and I installed just a pair of el-cheapo tweeters to get me by(bridged off of the woofers in the door) when I turned up my music to a certain level, the highs would just totally cut off... same thing with my new Alpine unit and my MB Quart components.. This never happend with my Infinity's untill the distribution blocks blew ofcourse...

now I have checked my basic wiring and before I go and redo everything from scratch(tomorrow) I was wundering if there is anything im missing... Please stop me from going down to circuit city and spending $100 on a monster audio pro wiring kit (which I feel I need and should just do) and tell me if Im missing sommin simple... wtf


DJ CURTIZ - taking over the world one record at a time
Live life on the edge, otherwise you take up too much space.

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hmmm some components have a safety feature that if you turn it up it will kick off so you wont blow the tweets. When you turn it up it cuts off then when you turn it down it instantly turns back on?

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2001 Toyota Celica GT
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Thnx 4 ur reply spyder

yes it does come back on momentarily, but the thing is it did this on a $20 pair of tweets too, which had no circuitry confused confused confused


DJ CURTIZ - taking over the world one record at a time
Live life on the edge, otherwise you take up too much space.

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hmmm do you have a lot of power going to them. Or are they within a good power range?

#233409 Jul 27, 10:34am
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1997 Nissan Pathfinder
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your gonna have to re-write that or add pics or somthing cause I have no idea what some of the stuff your saying is supposed to mean. By distrobution block do you mean crossover? Then what do you mean bridged? are you saying bridged off the amp or the crossover, or do you mean you hooked the tweeters in parallel in with the mid on the crossover?

Last edited by UncleBen; Jul 27, 2004 10:35am.

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2004 GMC Canyon Z-71
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that was really confusing to understand man. One thing that people confuse and dont understand. Most speakers are hard to OVERPOWER. Underpowering a speaker will actually do more damage to it.

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Originally Posted by trog2233
Underpowering a speaker will actually do more damage to it.

I'm sensing the same thing, most likely gain was completely up...

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yea thats what i'm thinkin...i think all his settings were just wrong grin

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2000 Toyota Celica GT
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Originally Posted by trog2233
that was really confusing to understand man. One thing that people confuse and dont understand. Most speakers are hard to OVERPOWER. Underpowering a speaker will actually do more damage to it.

I don't want to start a flame war, but that is the biggest lie in the history of car audio, and gets sooo many people to buy an amp that is more powerful than they will ever use.

Speakers can be overpowered. Things that will "kill" a speaker:

1) DC voltage (can you say "pop")

2) low frequency notes in a high frequency driver (tweeters, midrange possibly). Will throw the driver's voice coil out of the gap and ruin the speaker.

3) Sustained watts over the speaker's rating. A speaker rating (50 watts, etc) is the amount of power a speaker can handle over a sustained period of time (read continuously) before reaching thermal failure. A speaker generates heat when it is moving. Depending on the design of the speaker, it can only dissipate heat at a certain rate. If you power the speaker continually with more power than it is rated, it will not be able to keep itself cool. This will cause the voice coil to heat up too high, and in most cases will cause it to melt to the gap (happens in subs often when too much power is applied). In speakers with ferro-fluid or similiar, the fluid will be burned off, and then the voice coil will fuse.

4) CLIPPED signals (goes back to a DC voltage). This is the one that the above comment has its roots in. Here is the scenario:

You buy a low powered amp (say 20 watts x 2 RMS). You hook it up, and don't think it is powerful enough. So you go to your amp, and turn up the gain setting knob as high as it will go. You go back to your HU, and turn on the music again. Hey! It is louder! WOO!! Then a few minutes later, your speakers blow. What happened?? I know, that salesman was right... I should have bought a more powerful amp, then this would not have happened! ARRGH!!

WRONG. What happened is that you set the gain control knob to what you thought was maximum, which in reality is its minimum. That gain control knob is to match the output of your HU to the input section of the amp. So if your HU has 4 volt outputs, you set the amp gain control knob to 4 volts. This makes it so that the amp knows how much to amplify your HU's signal from at the input stage. What you have done is take your amps gain control knob and set it to like 0.1 volts. So your amp is expecting at the MOST 0.1 volts, and you gave it 4 volts. So it has taken an already strong signal, and attempted to make it stronger. As it was not designed for this, the signal leaving your amp's input stage going to the output stage is CLIPPED. In turn, your speakers were sent a clipped signal, and the clipped signal is what killed your speakers.
The included picture is an example of a clipped signal. The yellow signal is a clipped signal. The top and bottom of the sine wave have been "clipped" off, and are now just a flat line. This happens when you are asking more of your amp than it is capable of doing. Those flat lines are in reality a DC voltage... which will kill your speakers very quickly.

So, underpowered amps do not kill speakers. Someone attempting to make an amp do more than it is capable of by misusing the gain control knob can kill speakers.



This was an abreviated version... if anyone wants to read more on this, check out www.bcae1.com [bcae1.com] for general car audio info. For specifics on too little power:

http://www.bcae1.com/2ltlpwr.htm
1870134955-sine.JPG

Last edited by mach_y; Jul 27, 2004 12:33pm.

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so in summary, what I said in one sentence, was strung out for 7 paragraphs...

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that's been one of the most intelligent things said on here lately thumbsup

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