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Ultrasonic Oscillation

Hi. I have had recent issues with my Snell Ds, tweeters not working. Anyway this led me to test of all of my equipment including my GMA Europas. Their tweets were dead also. I dropped an email to Roy at GMA and he suggested that I may consider the possibility of ultrasonic oscillation in either my amp or pre-amp. They are the Odyssey Candela pre amp, and Stratos amp. Could you please explain what it is, and more importantly what are the causes. Soon I'll get a diagnostic locally and sending the pieces to Klaus for repairs if needed. I look forward to your insights. Thanks much, Dave
italian

Showing 4 responses by atmasphere

atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,014 posts
 
One other thing to look at is corrosion on the ground contacts of your RCA connectors. That can toast tweeters too.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,014 posts
 
Italian, It sounds to me like your amplifier has too little power and you are pushing it too hard. That is why tweeters fail! Its not because of a malfunction.

So you either need a more powerful amplifier or more efficient speakers.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,014 posts
 
Italian, one other possibility to consider is that if you have been clipping (overloading your amp with too much volume) then that will also damage tweeters.

Usually tweeters only have to handle a few watts but if you overload the amplifiers, the distortion that the amp makes can destroy the tweeters in a matter of seconds.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
12,014 posts
 
Italian, the volume control has nothing to do with the actual volume. With today's super high-output digital sources (a pet peave- there is no reason to have so much output) a 9:00 setting on the volume control might easily clip a lot of amps.

IOW it depends on how much output the source has too.

Another possibility is ultrasonic noise from the digital source.
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