Is my speaker blown out?

[YarisSedan]

So my right rear speaker off and on seems to cut out. When i turn the volume up all the way for a split second it starts to work kinda like its plugged up. Sometimes for a week or so its fine and then some days it acts up its wierd.

I just opened the trunk and pushed up and down on the speaker. The left side which is fine goes up and down freely. And the rubber around the speaker dosnt seem to be torn or broken. The other side which has the issue makes this scratching/cracking sound sound every time its pushed. But the rubber seems to be okay as well.

It sounds kinda like if you were stepping on a bag of popcorn it dosnt sound normal or too good. Strange thing if its blown out i wonder why it sounds okay sometimes.

The speakers are kicker 6x9 coaxials.

[Alien Mantis]

Yes, it sounds to me like it is blown.
Sounds like a burned-out / warped voice coil.

You can verify this by connecting another speaker to the wires, and test play it.

[talnlnky]

the voice coil got too hot, the epoxy that holds the coil together melted, the coil started to unravel, and now you got a birds nest all mushed up inside. Eventually the movement of the birds nest against the motor (steel & magnet) will cause the enamel coating on the voice coil wire to rub off, as soon as it does you will have a short... which means a 0ohm load on your amp. The amp will dump as much power as it can into that speaker for about .1seconds before the voice coil literally will vaporize were it was touching... as soon as it vaporizes, your speaker is officially dead and won't make anymore noise ever again. You may smell it a little.

Your amp should be fine, but it may blow a fuse in the process. best bet is just to buy some speakers and install them. Don't wait for the speaker to get any worse.



EDIT: that speaker will sound fine most likely when playing high frequencies that don't require the cone to move much, however, on lower midbass notes, or even lower midrange... thats when it will struggle to move, and sound bad.

[YarisSedan]

EDIT: that speaker will sound fine most likely when playing high frequencies that don't require the cone to move much, however, on lower midbass notes, or even lower midrange... thats when it will struggle to move, and sound bad.[/QUOTE]

Yeah thats exactly whats going on. Whenever on lower notes thats when i hear some distortion from that one speaker. I isolated for sure by moving my fader to only that speaker.

So you suggest until i can get a new one installed i should just uplug the power wire to it for the time being

[talnlnky]

Originally Posted by YarisSedan

So you suggest until i can get a new one installed i should just uplug the power wire to it for the time being

yeah, that would be the safest thing to do. If the wire were to rub the enamel off, and short... you have zero ohm load on the amp... thats bad for the amp, will draw all the current it can get from the electrical system. It COULD end up damaging your amp... I doubt it will, but it could... Here's the different things I seen happening if there is a short...

1) coil vaporizes quickly, circuit is killed, and it happens before any damage can happen to the amp.

2) amp blows a fuse, now nothing hooked up to that amp has power... As soon as you hook up another fuse and turn the stereo back on, same thing may happened again, or either possibility 1 or 3 may happen.

3) Some random circuit/resistor/fet/diode/whatever inside the amp is the weakest link and goes snap crackle pop... cept there's no rice crispies... just some smoke, and a funky smell coming from your amp. All this happened before the voice coil vaporized or your amps fuses popped.... Which is totally possible, fuses in amps are designed to keep a fire from starting, NOT TO SAVE AN AMP... The fuse MAY OR MAY NOT save the amp... but it will keep a fire from starting.