Smelly softening woofer and midranges

Additionally, speaker sounds rather flat and veiled-certainly not clean sounding. Could be related, or perhaps an unrelated placement issue.

Ozfly, Speaker is less than a year old. Tweeter seems fine. There are two 6 1/2" woofers and a 5 1/4" midrange. Using your test method, the woofers were both quiet upon light compression. The midrange, however, made a rubbing sound-almost like the sound of a manual bicycle tire air pump, both on the in and out cycle of the test. The speaker's been off all day while I was at work. Nothing sticky noted now. Watcha think? Roger

Great ideas gang. I'll do more testing later this week. Since the speaker is still under warranty, I want to avoid any extensive tests that might void the warranty. Everything is pointing toward the midrange voice coil.

The speaker is in a non-smoking environment. I haven't had the speaker long. The previous owner may have been a smoker. I really don't know. What effect would smoke have?