Recordings damage car speakers

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bouldersoundguy said:
It's possible there are low (bass) frequencies in your mix that you aren't aware of if you are mixing on smaller monitors or headphones that don't reproduce them. Those low frequencies can be really hard on speakers if you turn the volume up.

Does the same problem happen if you switch to the radio?
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The speakers on the old car are damaged now, so when I play the radio they crackle a ton - even on talk radio. I never had a problem with them before I owned an ipod or recorded music, and I've always played the radio loud. In the other car I've recently been using, the radio now causes them to crackle a little. It didn't before when I only occasionally used it and only played the radio or a CD.

Does that answer your question? I can post the song now if anyone wants to listen to it. At one point, I considered the possibility that the problem was related to EQ, especially because the speakers seem very irritated by the base in my songs. I tried to match the EQ of a professional song exactly using Ozone, but I cant be completely sure if that did anything because they speakers were already crackly.
 
RAMI said:
This blew your right speaker? There's almost NOTHING coming out of the right speaker. Something weird going on here. Are we on Candid Camera or something?
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That's pretty much the only song I listened to on this newer car's speakers. The right side is just the reverb.
 
simulation said:
That's pretty much the only song I listened to on this newer car's speakers. The right side is just the reverb.
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Weird. I'd say something else blew your speaker, but not this song. Maybe Linda Lovelace blew your speakers. :eek:
 
What damages car speakers?

Let's start with the answer to the question, what damages car speakers? Several things can do that because car speakers are not like other speakers you listen to. They are installed into the car body, designed to use the car body as the speaker "box". They are jostled around a LOT! They are subject to the vibrations of the engine and the rest of the car's anatomy. And they are not always the highest quality. (They don't design the car as a listening environment.) So it is very unlikely that your recordings have anything to do with your car speakers' demise. If it sounds good in your recording environment, it should sound good elsewhere. If you have a bass boost anywhere in line in your mixing location, turn it on. That WILL prevent you from mixing in too much bass for car speakers. Also check your car speaker settings and see if you have too much bass added. That's about it. Good Luck,
Rod Norman

simulation said:
Hello,
My home recordings have damaged my car speakers. They still play, but are super crackly. When I first started recording, several years ago, I would put a ton of reverb on my songs because I did not know any better. Could massive amounts of reverb damage speakers? What other kind of things would ruin speakers if the songs are not clipping? Even now, my reverbless recordings seem to stress speakers more than professional recordings. Am I imagining that? What is going on? I have read books and watched videos of recording and mixing. These helped but did not answer some of my more basic questions, like this one.

My recordings consist of me playing the guitar with the other instruments programmed in with Sampletank. I play the guitar through USB with a PodXT Live effects machine. The interface is a MBox2. The monitors are M-Audio BX5a. I use ProTools 10 on Windows 7.

I am obviously a super amateur, but I have spent a lot of time with trial and error trying to figure this out. The problem is, if the trial damages the speakers, that is a problem in itself. I have tried recording with no effects and this made a big difference in clarity, and the recordings do not seem to damage anymore, although they are super flat and sometime do sound like they are stressing the speakers more than a professional recording. I would like to be able to give my songs to people without worrying about ruining their speakers. What is going on? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
simulation
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Years ago I heard that playing musical instruments through normal domestic speakers could damage them (the speakers). I also heard that synthetic waveforms (like a saw tooth from a synth for example), could also damage them. I never understood the reason why and no one every explained. Over the years I'd forgotten all about it and never sought an answer.

But could these "old wives tales" be true though? And could something along these lines have damaged the car's system?

Be interested in hearing from any amp or speaker driver designer.
 
gsherman said:
Years ago I heard that playing musical instruments through normal domestic speakers could damage them (the speakers).
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It depends on the context. Playing a bass through a stereo speaker will surely blow the tweeter, at the very least. Commercial music is really pretty controlled with respect to dynamics. Actual instruments are not. Plug a bass into the stereo, crank it and start playing some slap funk thing and something bad can happen. Most of it will stem from the distortion of the amp feeding it. It all just revolves around not using something for its intended purpose.

gsherman said:
I also heard that synthetic waveforms (like a saw tooth from a synth for example), could also damage them. I never understood the reason why and no one every explained. Over the years I'd forgotten all about it and never sought an answer.
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This isn't true at all.
 
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gsherman said:
Years ago I heard that playing musical instruments through normal domestic speakers could damage them (the speakers).

But could these "old wives tales" be true though? And could something along these lines have damaged the car's system?
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When I first got a bass guitar in December 1981, I borrowed a mate's amp for a few weeks till he wanted it back. But from about Feb of '82, I discovered that by plugging my bass lead into one of the two mic inputs of my Hitachi tape deck and setting the deck in record mode, sound went through the amp to one of the speakers and gave perfectly good sound. I played bass at home this way through three different addresses right up until the summer of 1990 when I bought a 90 watt bass amp. I even recorded many times with this set up. I never blew a speaker.
Sometimes, when I'm recording with my drummer friends at home, I set up the domestic amp and speakers as part of my monitoring as they can, on occasion get loud on those drums and I can't hear what I'm doing via my DAW. But I'll also use the amp and speaker set up to demo the song on bass to them and have been doing this for around 4 years. Never had a blown speaker yet. The only time I ever blew speakers {and for that matter, the amp} was with the first set I ever had. I blame heavy rock and full volume for that !
 
Speakers stop working when you:

A: give them too much power for too long (voice coils overheat and burn up or warp the bobbin) or

B: give them too much voltage, even for a very short time (mechanical failure of the bobbin, cone, spider or surround)

Waveform really doesn't matter, though really bad clipping will move energy from lower to higher frequencies which can burn out tweeters meant to deal with normal musical proportions of high frequencies. And it will sound really bad.

Speakers all become rapidly less able to handle voltage below some frequency. To reproduce lower frequencies the speaker has to move more air, which requires it to move farther back and forth. If you try to make a speaker reproduce sound below its cutoff it can quickly run out of room to move and the parts will break. But even above that frequency too much voltage will cause mechanical failure.

Here's what too much voltage can do in an instant:

sts_18_blown_001.jpg
 
bouldersoundguy said:
Speakers stop working when you:

A: give them too much power for too long (voice coils overheat and burn up or warp the bobbin) or

B: give them too much voltage, even for a very short time (mechanical failure of the bobbin, cone, spider or surround)

Waveform really doesn't matter, though really bad clipping will move energy from lower to higher frequencies which can burn out tweeters meant to deal with normal musical proportions of high frequencies. And it will sound really bad.

Speakers all become rapidly less able to handle voltage below some frequency. To reproduce lower frequencies the speaker has to move more air, which requires it to move farther back and forth. If you try to make a speaker reproduce sound below its cutoff it can quickly run out of room to move and the parts will break. But even above that frequency too much voltage will cause mechanical failure.

Here's what too much voltage can do in an instant:
]
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I used to do a lot of reconing ....... one other thing you can do to them (I'm assuming this is another too much voltage situation) is you can have the voice coil 'bottom out' and hit the magnet cap or bottom of the voice coil slot which crumples up the voice coil.
 
yeah it gets loud and distorted at a few parts in the recording,
if the car player clips, your speakers can get toasted, plus if you were having the volume way up on the quieter parts.
I didn't see any clipping on my vu's here though.

could be cheap crap car speakers that cant handle much of anything too... get some JBLS or something decent, and see if you can toast them.
 
Maybe the levels are too high on your iPod. I know in aux on my car if you crank it too hard it sounds like ass. Keep the iPod levels low and the volume on the receiver high. :D
 
The thing is, if you are doing something that will blow a speaker, it will get really distorted and sound like crap long before the speaker gets damaged. If you crank it to the point that it sounds like crap and leave it there, it's your fault, not the recording.
 
Farview said:
The thing is, if you are doing something that will blow a speaker, it will get really distorted and sound like crap long before the speaker gets damaged. If you crank it to the point that it sounds like crap and leave it there, it's your fault, not the recording.
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That depends. If you way overpower the speaker you can pop it instantly with a low frequency transient, as I did with the one in the photo above. If the amps are about right for the speaker then you'll have to run it into clip for a while to overheat the voice coil, and that would sound bad.
 
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