[afghanwhig01]

Hi guys, everytime the wife goes out I put a movie on and watch it a little louder than normal, The other night I watched spiderman 3 on blu ray and cranked the volume way up, everytime I do this I get paranoid that I may have damaged my speakers or set up.
Is there a test or a disc out there that will test my speakers for me and put my mind at ease ?
cheers

[paulr2006]

Quote:

Originally Posted by afghanwhig01

Hi guys, everytime the wife goes out I put a movie on and watch it a little louder than normal, The other night I watched spiderman 3 on blu ray and cranked the volume way up, everytime I do this I get paranoid that I may have damaged my speakers or set up.
Is there a test or a disc out there that will test my speakers for me and put my mind at ease ?
cheers

This is awkward to give a simple answer to as it depends upon what Amplifier & speakers you have; it is always better to have a good quality amplifier running at say 1/2 volume to a poor one running at close to full output, a poor amplifier would start clipping which is very damaging to speakers. In my set up my Amplifier is capable of 160W RMS per channel into 6 ohms, my speakers are rated at 100W RMS, however it's never a problem because you would not be able to stand the volume from the speakers at any where near the output of the Amp. Obviously there are transient peaks which exceed what the speakers can take but as they are brief it's not usually a problem.

You can buy test discs which help with balancing the system but you cant's actully get one to test the speakers as such. Best way is if your ears start to bleed it's perhaps to loud! lol

Do you notice any distortion when playing them loud? the first thing that usually happens in terms of speaker damage is the lack of High Frequency sound as the tweeters usually "Fry" before the woofers, so if a speaker starts to sound "wooly" & lacklustre it's damaged.

[afghanwhig01]

Cheers for that, The speakers are B & W 601's with matching center and the amp is denon 1907 .
The sound is fine I'd just like something that I could use to make sure the speakers are still in A1 condition.

[chrisjr]

You already have the necessary equipment to determine whether the speakers are working OK or not. You have two perfectly adequate measuring instruments stuck to the sides of your head, otherwise known as the Mark 1 Human Ear

Basically if it sounds OK then it probably is. A blown speaker drive unit is easy to detect. It makes no noise. A speaker that is about to die makes a nasty noise. I have actually listened to speakers where you can plainly hear the coil scraping against the magnet because the suspension has failed!

Remove the front grill of the speaker so you can see the drive units. Play a bit of music with loads of treble content. Put your hand over the front of the tweeter (that will be the little one ). If you cannot hear any difference then the tweeter is blown. tweeters are far more prone to damage than bass speakers (the big ones ).

As paulr2006 says an underpowered amp struggling to make a loud noise can be more damaging than using an amp that is "too powerful" for the speakers. Gross distortion caused by clipping can seriously harm the speakers. But if you were driving the speakers into clipping you would have to be deaf not to notice. It is worse than listening to the Spice Girls trying to sing...

You've got a Denon amp and B&W speakers. both of which are very decent makes. Several notches above the all in one cheapo boxes you see stacked to the ceiling in Tesco or Asda. That kind of kit ought to be able to run for years with no trouble at all.