Surefire Ways to Ruin Your Speakers

Posted by David on 5/30/2014

Given the proper treatment, your speakers will work splendidly and for decades, although there can be some wear and tear issues, seeing as how they are comprised of moving parts. People with damaged speakers might wonder how this could happen. What follows are some of the more common problems that lead to avoidable speaker tragedy:


1.  Over or under powering:

If you have a 1000 watt speaker, and you use a 50 watt amp with the volume turned up higher that halfway, it will produce a square wave or clipping which will produce a bad signal that will surely damage the voice coil.


2.  Bad wiring:

When the wiring is not appropriately connected within the speaker cabinet, and including everything from the cabling to the speakers, from the amp, and in the room...any of these issues can result in the production of an intermittent signal and transients that will consequently damage a speaker.


3.  Turning the amp on with the volume turned up:

It’s a good idea to make sure that every time you power down your sound system, you first take the volume down all the way.  This may seem overly simple, however it could literally save you from the expense of having to replace your investment from avoidable transient damage.


4. Locating Indoor Speakers Outside:

Try all you will, but you will not be able to produce the same volume from your indoor speakers when you locate them or move them outside. And any attempt to compensate by turning up the volume might just clip the signal. Satisfactory outdoor speaker performance requires a bare minimum of 12 dB (or 16 times the power) more sound output than what’s needed indoors, and can actually go on up to 20 dB (that’s 100 times the power of indoor speakers,) to deliver amazing sound.


5.  Feedback at a high volume:

This is caused when one frequency is amplified for a long time, which produces overheating of the voice coil. In home theater and entertainment systems, feedback results when microphones are used (say, for Karaoke,) or any other form of added external audio input is being used.


6.  Power surges:

Whether as resulting from the electric company or any other reason. There is just no reason you should ever have to deal with any problems resulting from a power surge.  If you are investing in a quality speaker system, you absolutely must include a good surge protector.


If you exercise a little caution ensuring that your speakers are well cared for, they will continue to produce for you the sound quality that you heard the very first time you turned on your system.