If you are blowing tweeters, it's most likely your amp's or source's fault. Either your system is unnecessarily bright or you are getting distortion by over-driving your amp. Most speakers can handle a ton of power but one watt of distortion will ruin them.
What's the rest of your system? |
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As Elevick was stating, it doesn't matter what speakers you have; if you're underpowering them, any speaker will fail. It's very hard to ruin a speaker by over driving it, and quite easy to blow a speaker by underpowering it.
Are you sure your amp is powerful enough? |
I have decent equipment Audio Research SP8 and Aragon 4004 mkII. I only have blown the tweeter once. It was an accident. i turned on the system and walked away and the volume was just a bit too high and there was a trumpet part that blasted it. I was too late too the volume control to turn it down. It only sounds like there is damage when I play certain passages of certain songs. |
As previously stated it was most likely distortion resulting in the blown tweeter rather than too much power into your B&W's... Since you were asking about speaker choice though, Zu Omen's high efficency allow very high sound pressure levels from modest power. If you listen at levels likely to cause the neighbors to complain, consider them or perhaps some of the Klipsch Heritage series speakers if the wide range/no crossover approach is not to you liking. These are well within the budget range you mentioned.
Cheers! |
Jimbones,
I'm not sure any speaker will handle what accidentally happened to your B&Ws. Well, at least not any good speaker anyway. |
The PSB Stratus Gold can play loudly and take a lot of power, but if you underpower it, like any speaker, you will blow the tweeters due to distortion, not power. |
I have been reading some threads and some people that have older speakers with ferrofluid say it dries out. Maybe that is it? Some songs the tweeter is very clear and on others there is a slight static sound. |
Altec Voice of the Theatre. |
Not the tweeter. I have an idea what it is, update soon. |
The right sized newer OHM Walshes that you can find to fit your room size and the juiciest good amp you can find to throw at them. A clear cut slam dunk for me for this application. You;d be hard pressed to do better at any price. Plus, the room filling omni presentation will not drive you out of the room as the volume goes up. |
I had a friend in Minnesota that drove his Snell c5's hard and they always performed for him;at this time his amps were the first run of adcom 555's and then mccormack dna-1 monoblocks. |
I have yet to conclude but I swapped tweeters and the defect did not switch L/R speakers. So I suspect the mid. Not the actual speaker but a defect in my own handi work. I put a poly bypass cap on a NPE and maybe have a bad solder connection and I also changed a resistor value and used an older power resistor I had in stock and maybe it wasn't good so as soon as I go in I'll find out. (how embarrassing :) |
Ugh, cold solder connection on a poly cap I installed to replace NPE. Fixed sounds great! At least it didn't cost me anything other than aggrevation! Note, these do B&W do play loud enough with no distortion! |
Buy an old set of B&W DM7's.
The Xover will not let you pop them. Red light comes on and they break the circuit, then you turn the amp down and 10 seconds later, they click and come back online.
I think there is a set on fleabay right now. |
