Can you smell your speakers when youre rockin out?


Lol, I know this a funny question, but whenever I'm listening at loud volumes, I can smell my speakers. It's always the same smell no matter what speakers I've had. It's not a burning smell, more like the insulation used in the boxes. Is it the air blowing through the insulation and then out the port, or cooked voicecoils? Like I said, it doesn't smell like burning electronics but I 'm not sure what it is. It kind of smells good; like new rubber in a bike shop or race gas smells to me. It's the association of good times :-)
b_limo

Showing 3 responses by royj

Kenji,
How dare you tell people what I think, especially of other designers! I agree and admire what countless designers, past and present, have accomplished. Indeed, many ideas of others and the research of others have triggered my own. This is reflected on my website, under the History of Loudspeakers- a long list of what anyone would consider important developments in speaker design.

I agree with wolf and others here that fiberglass, especially acoustic fiberglass (which is bonded) is not a health hazard. IF IT WERE, then our EPA would have banned it, as they did asbestos. You may not know this since you are in England. And fiberglass is not banned in the UK or EU if you’d done a search.

In answer to the original poster’s question, in my experience as a manufacturer, I agree with others that the two most likely culprits for this odor are the residual fumes inside from a varnish or other wood-finish overspray. This should go away after several months. The other cause could be from voice coil heat causing outgassing of the adhesives used on the voice-coil wires and perhaps the plastic voice coil former itself, on which the wires are wound (if it is not an aluminum former). Sufficient heat is generated when playing rock music at REALLY LOUD levels, and that means using at least a 75W amp on 90dB speakers, to a 250W amp on insensitive speakers. It cannot be the fiberglass inside the cabinet, because that has very little odor even when new, and because the ambient temp inside any home speaker’s cabinet is never high unless it’s sitting in full sun all day.


Thanks to everyone for their support. Kenji is the only one to act this way out of many thousands of clients since 1991. You may have noticed he never answers anyone's question but only changes the subject and accuses someone else of attack. How strange. Shall we ignore him in this thread from now on? Certainly not doing the O.P. any good. Otherwise, best wishes.
shadome, you are completely right about the outgassing of adhesives going away sooner than later. Now, concerning your idea about ferrofluid burning up- first, it is a synthetic oil very similar to Mobil One, which means it burns at a temp much higher than any voice-coil winding and voice-coil former should be able to survive. Regardless, I am glad you suggested  that.

But dave_b got it right-- the point we all missed was the smell always being present. I would suspect the transformer in the power amp. desniffifying? Yes!