Infinity Kappa 9 S EMIT not functioning or Hearing Loss?

Wow, so much activity since I last visited.

To hit a few quick points first. I’m 43 and only real possible environmental damage I can think of is that I was a teen in the late 90s with a couple 12" subs in my car, which I rocked until the late ’00s. I definitely didn’t go as a hard as others I know who actually did damage their hearing - I actually cared about sound quality over quantity. I’m also a corporate accountant, so nothing work related. Only been to a few concerts/shows that left my ears ringing for a few hours after - one of them was definitely worth it. ;-)

To at @bpoletti post, I actually had already done exactly what you are referring to using the Spectroid app, zoomed in to ~10kHz to 35kHz, playing the High Frequency Response Test by myNoise via Tidal on each speaker. I should figure out how to post those screen shots. That’s how I know for sure each speaker is reproducing frequencies approaching 22kHz. I just can’t hear anything above 14 to 15kHz. I guess my question related to that would be, are the regular EMITs able to produce those frequencies, or does it more or less have to be coming from the S-EMIT if it’s that high?

Regarding removal to inspect the board/crossover/pots (I’m not a technical guy, forgive me if that’s the wrong terminology), how do I do that? I took the rear bezel off, but it appears sealed in there somehow. I took off the lower front woofer and moved the fill away to see the board. I didn’t have the lluevos to push or pull it out.

I’ve seen Bob Douglas referenced on other threads and on other sites, so I may do that at some point, just to see what his thoughts are.

This is all very welcomed discussion - thank you!

@ervikingo

Keep in mind that this is a very course troubleshooting method that detects "broken" stuff and not items that are working, but not quite up to speed.

Audio signals to the speakers are AC. So, a basic multimeter will measure the audio signal. If you have a driver that is "quiet" there should be a presence of AC at the driver terminals iF the signal is arriving from the crossover. Just put any static signal (pink noise, or test tone) at the speakers input terminals and you should have some value there. If not, you most likely have a problem upstream somewhere. If this is the case, you can also inject the signal from a test amp (small amp/receivers work well for this) and inject signal directly to the raw driver as an additional test. Make sure the speaker is disconnected from your main amp. In the case of a tweeter, you may want to connect a capacitor (4-7uF) inline just to be safe. If the raw driver plays, you have a working driver, not necessarily a optimum driver, but a working driver.

I’m not an engineer, but have used this method for some time.

My wife had been out of town and just confirmed something is not right. Slight buzz/rattle out of one when bass hits (not playing loud) and muted jumble out of the other - certainly nothing resembling "sparkle" @ervikingo described. Strangely, I can now hear it, but I was listening to actual music this time, not test tones.

Not fun, but I guess it's part of the vintage game. I stopped modding cars not long ago because I was tired of working on them when stuff inevitably met their limit. At least that I could do that myself. Time to start learning/tinkering with audio.

@richardt9000 

Before you go into too many crazy steps, swap speakers left to right and see iof the particular noise stays with the speaker (to rule out a system problem other than the speakers)

That is some sage advice, @ervikingo, Thank you! Hopefully I can get back to playing with my toys before next weekend.