{"id":2168,"date":"2018-09-12T14:34:19","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T02:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/?p=2168"},"modified":"2019-04-06T14:36:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-06T01:36:21","slug":"how-to-save-a-smoking-subwoofer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/how-to-save-a-smoking-subwoofer\/","title":{"rendered":"How to save a smoking subwoofer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Tech Talk | WRITTEN BY AARON TRIMBLE | September 2018<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A burning a voice coil can be simultaneously the best and worst moment for a young bass enthusiast. It may be the loudest the system has ever played, but the rock concert fogger effect instantly brings panic to a previously enjoyable experience. Many of us have been there, including Ben from Georgia who asks,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI just smoked all my subs and recones are gonna be expensive. Is there anything I could have done to save them?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now burning a voice coil only happens for 1 reason \u2013 Too much power! Clipped, unclipped, dirty, clean, it doesn\u2019t really matter how the power goes into the woofer, it is going to cause the voice coil to heat up. If the voice coil heats up enough, it will eventually reach the point of burning the resins that hold the coil windings together. Of course, the goal is never to get to this point. However, if you do you\u2019re probably going to start smelling them, or worse, you\u2019ll see smoke. Both the smoke and the smell are a result of those resins on the coil returning to liquid and eventually a vapor. You can read more about this in the May Tech Talk earlier this year when we did a Burned Speaker Voice Coil Diagnosis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So let\u2019s say I\u2019m giving a friend a sweet full tilt demo of my new subs and all the sudden, I start smelling hot voice coil. It\u2019s all cool though\u2026 I\u2019m not even playing that hard and my friend\u2019s cousin\u2019s boyfriend tuned the amp with a digital multi-meter, so I know I\u2019m not damaging anything. Wait, is that smoke?! Oh no, what should I do? If you said, \u201cTurn it off!\u201d be sure to carry some recones around with you, because that\u2019s how you ruin a woofer. Turning off a hot woofer doesn\u2019t help the woofer cool down, it just doesn\u2019t add any additional heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We want to try and cool down the coil as quickly as possible. The best way to do that is to continue playing the woofer, albeit not at the level we were originally playing. By allowing the woofer to continue to play, the coil is moving up and down inside the woofer motor and moving air around the coil. The best way to move the woofer to cool it down is with music or tones well below the tuning frequency of the enclosure. The reason for this is to encourage the most movement from the woofer while minimizing power input to get there. So if I have a 9900 series woofer and I clamp 4000 watts at my tuning frequency, the coil will heat up to a failure level eventually. Now if I can play down below tuning, say 20 Hz and it only takes 1000 watts to reach a large amount of excursion, the coil will begin cooling itself far faster than its heating itself back up with power, thanks in large part to DD Audio\u2019s Free Flow Cooling<\/a> feature. If I just stop playing the woofer, it won\u2019t be generating any more heat, but it also won\u2019t be cooling itself either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So next time you\u2019re beating the snot out of your woofers and they get stinky, remember, don\u2019t turn it off. Turn it down!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tech Talk | WRITTEN BY AARON TRIMBLE | September 2018 A burning a voice coil can be simultaneously the best and worst moment for a young bass enthusiast. It may be the loudest the system has ever played, but the rock concert fogger effect instantly brings panic to a previously enjoyable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2168"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2176,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2168\/revisions\/2176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hifihq.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}