Have I blown my new Polk M10? How?

[Dirt McGirt]

Hi friends, I'm a long time lurker and this is my first post. It's a question about my new Polk M10 speakers, the new models that Polk is phasing in to replace the R15s. All questions about Polk ripping off customers aside (they're the R15s in everything but name and faceplate color, and they're twice the price!), I've a question regarding my unfortunately blown left speaker.

I carefully broke my babies in for a week, subjecting them to extreme frequencies at low volume, then marginally increasing volume to a warm, full sound. They stood tall despite the low end of Sunn o)))'s droning doom metal, the shrieking feedback of Boris' noisy psychedelia, and the full-spectrum blast of My Bloody Valentine. They were safely broken in and sounded beautiful at a variety of volumes for two weeks.

Then, while playing the first track on Michael Jackson's Thriller (at moderate volume) of all things, the left speaker suddenly dropped in volume. I panned to the left and found little-to-no sound coming out, and what did emerge was bathed in static and crackle. For all intents and purposes the speaker is now useless.

Thankfully I picked up the repair plan when I bought the pair, so it'll be fixed shortly, but I need to figure out what, if anything, I did wrong here. Was I too aggressive in breaking in the speakers? I don't want this to happen again and any advice the forum can offer would be eminently useful.

[poneal]

Have you ever heard that story about the truck driver who was unable to get his truck under this overpass because it was just 2" to tall. He tried everything he could think of to get two measly inches. In the end, this kid on a bike comes by and says, why don't you let some air out of the tires, that shoud do it.

In this case, take the speaker in question and hook it up to the other one. If it plays, then it's not the speaker. If it doesn't, then it's the speaker.

Paul

[Dirt McGirt]

I'm a little unclear on your suggestion: I should hook the speaker up to the other channel to ensure it's a speaker issue and not an amp issue?

[Carl Reid]

I'm a little unclear on your suggestion: I should hook the speaker up to the other channel to ensure it's a speaker issue and not an amp issue?


Yeah, I suspect that's what he's suggesting.... it's a quick test and worth doing before you return the speaker....

[poneal]

I'm a little unclear on your suggestion: I should hook the speaker up to the other channel to ensure it's a speaker issue and not an amp issue?

That's the fastest way to check. Just disconnect the speaker wire from the bad speaker terminal. Move the speaker over near the other one. Disconnect the speaker wire from that one and plug it into the bad one. If the bad one works now, it's an amp issue. If not then it's possible you blew a speaker, fried a resistor, or other things.

Paul

[markw]

Look at it this way... if the amp or CD player were on fire and the speaker went silent or started sounding funky, would you still be eyeing up the speaker as the culprit? I think not.

That's a little drastic but consider, when amps and other electronic devices go south, there are usually no visible signs to identify which it is. You gotta do a little detective work.

...just switch the speaker leads on the back of the amp (R > L and L > R) and see if the problem travels to the other speaker. If it does, then the problem is not the speaker.