volume change & quality deterioration

Hi All,

I'm noticed a problem today so I thought I'd see if anyone here has encountered anything similar. The volume from the left tweeter fluctuates while listening to loud music. When reduced it appears to be fine. Also there is a deterioration in the quality which seems to happens at certain tweeter frequencies. I'm just wondered if there is a known way to fix this or if its worth taking it back to the installers?

Thanks for any help.

Raas

Peugeot 306 - professional install (April '02).
Directed 500
component mbquart 216 5"
JL 12wo

It could be as simple as a loose speaker wire, or it could be as serious as a blown tweeter. Hard to tell from the description, should take it to your installer and have them diagnose it.

(Side note: If this is empeg-specific, it could also be because you are boosting certain frequencies above the 0db digital threshold. What is the volume setting on your empeg and what does your EQ curve look like?)

Something I notice on my own system is that one of my four channels will distort occasionally because the potentiometers on my amplifier are cheesy. If I turn one of the potentiometers back and forth (I think it's the "gain" pot for that channel), the distortion goes away for a while. I think it's just dirty contacts on the pot and I have to sweep the contacts occasionally to keep them working right.

Hi,

Yup, I have a Riocar 20gb job....apart from this hitch, I'm seriously proud of it!

Yeah, thought it could be a blown tweeter to start with, although the deterioration is only on certain freqs, the volume flux is the worst thing tho.

My EQ curve is totally flat, I haven't tweaked that at all.

I also haven't touched the amp connectors since I had it installed, is that a standard job? (to clean the points I mean)

Cheers,

Greetings!

If you have easy access to the amp (or head unit), one experiment to try would be to swap your left and right channels temporarily, to see if it is signal related or if the problem is with the speaker.

Good Plan Paul - I'll try that in the morning.

Ta

Yeah, that was a good suggestion, Paul.

The volume fluctuation thing makes it sound like it could be one of the amp channels going out, too. Swapping the RCA plugs would help narrow that down. If you can, you can isolate whether the problem is at the amp or at the speakers by first testing with the RCA plugs swapped, then testing with the speaker connections swapped.

Don't rule out the amplifier as the cause either - a blown component can have bizarre volume & frequency related effects. You can test for this in a similar manner. (ie swap both inputs and outputs, and see if the noise follows the amp channel.)