On Sunday I installed my Blaupunkt (cheapo) 6.75" 2-way speakers in my rear deck and was listening to music while installing RAAMmat in the interior. They are wired directly to my new Alpine HU (17 watts x 4 RMS). After a few hours I decided to turn up the volume to see how they sounded. The speakers are rated at 45 watts RMS. I figured I would see how loud I could turn it before the headunit's internal amp started distorting. After about half a second at a moderately loud volume, one of the speakers suddenly started buzzing loudly and lost its bass. I'm guessing it's blown, but physically it appears normal.

I have no experience with this, but after a little reading it seems that an underpowered signal that clips can blow out a speaker just like an overpowered signal. Is this true? I thought it took a LOT to make a speaker blow, i.e. hours and hours at extreme volumes.

I'm so annoyed about this because I had the rear deck and trim all put together again but I had to remove it all to get the speaker out. Trying to decide whether I should file a warranty claim with Blaupunkt, or just eat the $50 and buy a new set of rear speakers.

 

Just send it back they will send you a replacement.

A speaker needs to break in, and what you did with a most likely clipped signal did it in. Next time take it easy on the speaker for roughly 10 hours, and also you should have had your hpf on and set to around 80 or so.

 

Ah, somehow in all my research I missed the break-in info, thanks.

HPF= high pass filter, right? I know my amp has a subsonic filter set to 16Hz to help prevent speaker damage, but these speakers won't be connected to the amp. Any particular kind of HPF I need?

 

kind of hard to blow a speaker that can take 45 watts thermally with 15 watts. anyhow, if you have a DMM, measure the resistance of the coil. put the leads onto the speaker leads and see what it reads. easy way to see if the speakers are good or done for.

 

Kthx, I'll try that but I'll have to borrow a multimeter. What should it read? 4 ohms or is the impedance different from the resistance in this case?

But if the resistance is normal, I still have a speaker that sounds terrible....

 

should be a little less than 4 ohm. (around 3.4 iirc, it should tell you in the owners manual i believe)

 

Does it crackle? and make funny noises? It might just be a loose connection.

 

I checked the connection, unless you're referring to the internal speaker connections. With bass and midrange tones it makes a distorted buzzing noise, like an electric guitar type distortion of a pure sound. It does not sound like something is torn and physically buzzing.

 

Sounds like mechanical failure to me...

 

Here's my report on the warranty service: on Tuesday I mailed the broken speaker to Midwest Electronics, which is the authorized service center for Blaupunkt in the US. No RMA is required; I just packed it up with a letter including a description of the problem as well as a copy of the receipt from Crutchfield. On Friday (3 days later!) I received a brand new PAIR of the same speakers from Midwest! I'm only a few hours away from the service center so shipping was quick, but I'm still very impressed at their turnaround. And now I have a brand new backup in case one of the other ones goes.

Verdict: Blaupunkt has great warranty service!