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One of speakers stopped working , what should I do? (more details below )

brownprider07

Full Member
Joined
Sep 14, 2013
Messages
262
Location
Florida
I have a ported subwoofer box and one of the subwoofers stopped working and I took it out of the box tested everything else to make sure it wasn't something simple. The subwoofer is a kicker 15r so it has an impedience switch. So the setting I was using it on I know longer get a reading (4ohm) but if I switch it to the other side (1ohm) I do get a reading for that one.
So I had both subs wired to a final ohm reading of 2. With one of the subwoofers out the reading is different. What should I do ? I left the sub that is still working in there. My amp can only go as far as 1ohm.
I was thinking of buying a cheap sub for now and putting it in place of the old one.
 
First of all how did you build your box?

Ported boxes if the port isn't properly done can put a lot of extra pressure on a speaker causing it to prematurely wear out.

My personal preference is to only build sealed boxes because of this issue and that ported boxes tend to have a peaky sound curve to them because of the port which can be harder to tune than a sealed box.

If everything was done properly then I would say get a new speaker is your best option. If the chambers are shared between the speakers you really don't want to mix speakers because they could end up sounding like crap or one could damage the other.

The other issue is if you over drive the speakers and start clipping at any point in the sound chain you can quickly burn up a speaker. The issue is the clipping happens because your tying to push the sound level above what the amplifier can make which creates the sine wave to become more square. This squaring off causes a DC voltage to go to the speaker for a short portion of the wave which causes the voice coil to get warmer and could blow the voice coil.

Sounds a lot like you toasted one of the voice coils.

What type of amplifier are you running?
 
I bought the subwoofer box off of (car audio factory). It is a ported 2 15".
The subwoofers are in separate chambers. I have taken out the bad and currently just running the one at 4ohms.
The amp is a hifonics Brutus brx2416.1d
This sucks. Because nothing is cheap :/
 
I see potentially two issues....

If you bought a generic ported box not designed for your speakers it is not tuned for your speakers and could be putting undo stress on them...  The speakers your using are a decent brand name but if your using a ported box it needs to be tuned to your speaker...

The other is HiFonics as far as I know has never been a high quality amplifier so it is possible you are clipping your amplifier which would take those speakers out before their time. Newer, high quality amplifiers that I have seen won't clip even at full gains. So as long as your stereo doesn't clip your good.

At this point I would suggest just replacing bad speaker and make sure you don't have your gains up too far. If it is clipping, really doesn't matter what speakers you use... 

Just because an amplifier can go to 1 ohm doesn't mean you should. Makes it easier to clip the amplifier.

With a ported box the issue with grabbing just one speaker the port will work at a different frequency range for each speaker and will be a crap shoot. Either both will be peaking at similar frequencies and sound OK or not and sound like crap. Sealed box isn't as bad because there is no tuning.

Good luck!


 
Thank you ! I really appreciate the help. I went with that certain box because it replace the Midgate and it allows me to have those big 2 15" without my loss of space. Are there any recommendations? I'm just thinking of selling or giving away what still works and getting new better setup. I wasn't that happy with the current one anyways. I'm willing to spend but I'm not rich either haha.
P.s. I like my music loud.
 
Realistically you have to decide what you can do... You are not going to get good quality speakers that sound good and loud without spending some money. Not going to happen.

And does loud mean you want to bounce quarters off the hood and make you dizzy or do you want to be able to crank the music and it sounds like your at a concert.

Nothing makes better quality sound than a properly matched Sealed box. Stuff it with fiberglass insulation and your all set.  (Note, many speakers have lax requirements for sealed boxes...  Ie a 10" sub may work great in a 1/2 cuft box and might also sound great in a 2 cuft box.

When looking at subs you can pretty much assume that the smaller the subwoofer the easier it is for it to make clean sound but the less deep bass it can make. And vise versa...  But still good quality amplifier matched to a good quality speaker will be much better than a bunch of cheap speakers attached to a cheap amplifier.

I may go with a 4x10" midgate eventually if I really want the sound output... Although I have a single 10" right now in a cheap down firing under seat box that gets pretty loud and shakes the mirror pretty good...  The nice thing about going with 4 10"s is I can still get loud output and good sound quality. But 2 15 "would be cheaper and probably as loud or louder... Just not as clean of sound.

Note: when I mention speaker sizes I mean when the model and make are the same... A JL Audio 15" speaker at 300 watts on a JL amplifier is likely going to sound A LOT better and a LOT louder than a 15" BOSS speaker running off a BOSS 600 watt amplifier...

You can find good deals on places like Craigs list but be wary of potential for stolen equipment.

Rodney
 
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