Emotiva T1+ Tweeters Burning Up??

[highfigh]

Since we didn't see a screen shot of his sound meter, I guess there is the possibility that he is not telling us the SPL on the sound level meter.

But he says he is and that is reads 72db.

(I agree that if his VOLUME knob is set to "72 percent" that is going to be way higher than 72db on a SPL meter and may be a clue about what is going on.)

I didn't see any mention of a meter, did you?

 

[highfigh]

like, uh... all ribbon tweeters...

Here is a page that is a decent primer on basic tweeter types. From the segment on ribbons: "...they require transformers for impedance matching ..." That is distinct from "pseudo-ribbons," mislabeled ribbons such as planars, AMTs, etc.

I guess the definition needs to be cleaned up- if metallic traces on a thin membrane isn't a 'ribbon', how does a "true ribbon tweeter" differ, other than the transformer? or, is the 'ribbon' supposed to be long and thin? The examples given aren't long and thin, IMO.

Infinity was calling their EMIT tweeters and EMIM mids 'ribbon' almost 40 years ago- why didn't anyone say they were wrong, back then?

 

[TLS Guy]

You guys are spinning your wheels. The tweeter is a pleated "accordion" design of the Hiel type. Those tweeters are not prone to the problem the OP describes.

I know we have all pushed our speakers at times. However, I highly doubt any of you have had a tweeter get hot to the touch. Emotiva have to get the accolade for producing a speaker with a fault just way of the end of any spectrum any of us have ever experienced or heard of. That is quite an achievement.

 

[highfigh]

You guys are spinning your wheels. The tweeter is a pleated "accordion" design of the Hiel type. Those tweeters are not prone to the problem the OP describes.

I know we have all pushed our speakers at times. However, I highly doubt any of you have had a tweeter get hot to the touch. Emotiva have to get the accolade for producing a speaker with a fault just way of the end of any spectrum any of us have ever experienced or heard of. That is quite an achievement.

I have never killed a tweeter, except maybe the one when we were revamping the audio system in a bar and someone cranked the new amp with one of the old speakers connected. It suddenly became very quiet (still made sound) and then, made a strange buzzing sound that rose in pitch before uttering its last. Someone pushed on the woofer's cone and smoke came out through the mesh dust cap.

I don't know how hot they had become, but the ESS diaphragms did fail, at times. They had some kind of Silicone on them and the diaphragm's damage could be seen.

What do you think about the possibility that the amp went into oscillation? 170+ degrees F is awfully hot for a tweeter. I have felt woofer magnets that were fairly warm, but not hot. One of my Altec 12" had a voice coil fail because the amplifier oscillated, but I wasn't there to stop it. The enamel flowed and filled the gap, locking the coil in place.

 

[Pogre]

You know I like it loud, have had several pairs of speakers, have played them all at pretty ridiculous levels and have never burned up or blown a tweeter. That really is something unusual.

 

[nathan_h]

I didn't see any mention of a meter, did you?

Yes.

Emotiva T1+ Tweeters Burning Up??

I have a brand new pair of Emotiva T1+ speakers about a month old. I have gone through two tweeters, they are physically burning up, discoloring the tweeter, temp reached 150 degrees with a heat gun measurement. Customer service has been great, but pinpointing the problem is the issue. The first...

forums.audioholics.com

Emotiva T1+ Tweeters Burning Up??

I have a brand new pair of Emotiva T1+ speakers about a month old. I have gone through two tweeters, they are physically burning up, discoloring the tweeter, temp reached 150 degrees with a heat gun measurement. Customer service has been great, but pinpointing the problem is the issue. The first...

forums.audioholics.com

 

[TLS Guy]

I have never killed a tweeter, except maybe the one when we were revamping the audio system in a bar and someone cranked the new amp with one of the old speakers connected. It suddenly became very quiet (still made sound) and then, made a strange buzzing sound that rose in pitch before uttering its last. Someone pushed on the woofer's cone and smoke came out through the mesh dust cap.

I don't know how hot they had become, but the ESS diaphragms did fail, at times. They had some kind of Silicone on them and the diaphragm's damage could be seen.

What do you think about the possibility that the amp went into oscillation? 170+ degrees F is awfully hot for a tweeter. I have felt woofer magnets that were fairly warm, but not hot. One of my Altec 12" had a voice coil fail because the amplifier oscillated, but I wasn't there to stop it. The enamel flowed and filled the gap, locking the coil in place.

I had not considered the possibility of supersonic oscillation. That takes a highly reactive load, and I have not heard or encountered that outside of electrostatic loudspeakers.

When your 12" Altec burnt out that must have been an oscillation in the audible range, as the crossover would have blocked a suprasonic oscillation. Much more likely the burn out of a 12" driver was due to a huge episode of DC offset. If the top end of the speaker system was intact, I can tell it was DC offset for sure, as the series caps protect all the other drivers, but not the woofer. That I have seen at least twice.

However if Emotiva have designed a speaker that is not electrostatic, that presents such an a reactive load that it sends an amp into oscillation, then they still need some sort of Darwin speaker design award. It would be obvious, in both the modelling and measurements of impedance and phase angle. I really find it hard to believe that is the problem. In addition he has driven it with an Emotiva amp and a receiver. When this event occurs it usually takes out the amp as well as the speakers. I would not have thought a receiver would survive this insult. I doubt oscillation is the answer to this.

 

[highfigh]

I had not considered the possibility of supersonic oscillation. That takes a highly reactive load, and I have not heard or encountered that outside of electrostatic loudspeakers.

When your 12" Altec burnt out that must have been an oscillation in the audible range, as the crossover would have blocked a suprasonic oscillation. Much more likely the burn out of a 12" driver was due to a huge episode of DC offset. If the top end of the speaker system was intact, I can tell it was DC offset for sure, as the series caps protect all the other drivers, but not the woofer. That I have seen at least twice.

However if Emotiva have designed a speaker that is not electrostatic, that presents such an a reactive load that it sends an amp into oscillation, then they still need some sort of Darwin speaker design award. It would be obvious, in both the modelling and measurements of impedance and phase angle. I really find it hard to believe that is the problem. In addition he has driven it with an Emotiva amp and a receiver. When this event occurs it usually takes out the amp as well as the speakers. I would not have thought a receiver would survive this insult. I doubt oscillation is the answer to this.

In the case of my speaker, it's a 417B, which was made for guitar or mids in a PA and was connected to a guitar amp. The amp had gone into oscillation before, but I had thought the problem was gone after I resoldered some connections and used it for quite a while before loaning it. There was no crossover. I was able to correct it, but only by resoldering most of the connections.

I have heard a saying about this kind of thing- "An amplifier is only one or two components away from being an oscillator". If a component has drifted or failed, it could oscillate.

I think a measurement is needed for voltage and frequency range going to the tweeters.

 

[highfigh]

Yes.

Emotiva T1+ Tweeters Burning Up??

I have a brand new pair of Emotiva T1+ speakers about a month old. I have gone through two tweeters, they are physically burning up, discoloring the tweeter, temp reached 150 degrees with a heat gun measurement. Customer service has been great, but pinpointing the problem is the issue. The first...

forums.audioholics.com

Emotiva T1+ Tweeters Burning Up??

I have a brand new pair of Emotiva T1+ speakers about a month old. I have gone through two tweeters, they are physically burning up, discoloring the tweeter, temp reached 150 degrees with a heat gun measurement. Customer service has been great, but pinpointing the problem is the issue. The first...

forums.audioholics.com

I guess I should have typed 'SPL meter'. I was referring to the 72dB he wrote about and I was trying to find out if it was 72dB measured, displayed on the AVR or only the 72/100 scale. .

 

[nathan_h]

I agree it is ambiguous. But since I wrote: Get an SPL meter app. And he wrote I'm getting one. And then he posted what he said were SPL readings, I HOPE he was using the app. But I agree, we don't know for sure and he didn't share a screen shot of the readings or explicitly say he is using the app.

He is using a Denon AVR and I don't recall denon actually using the letters SPL in their display but it is quite possible he saw 72 on the AVR and assumed that is SPL even though it is not.

 

[highfigh]

I agree it is ambiguous. But since I wrote: Get an SPL meter app. And he wrote I'm getting one. And then he posted what he said were SPL readings, I HOPE he was using the app. But I agree, we don't know for sure and he didn't share a screen shot of the readings or explicitly say he is using the app.

He is using a Denon AVR and I don't recall denon actually using the letters SPL in their display but it is quite possible he saw 72 on the AVR and assumed that is SPL even though it is not.

If the display is showing dB, it reads -xxdB until 0dB, then it loses the - indication. The 0-100 scale is useless, IMO.

 

[nathan_h]

Good note. Well, he sure wasn't listening at -72 on the AVR unless he has the hearing of a mouse.

I suppose he might have been using the 1-100 scale, in which case 72 might be pretty loud but isn't calibrated against anything and yes is definitely not related to any particular DB in a reliable sense.

We need to see the SPL info from the smart phone app!

 

[slipperybidness]

I have a brand new pair of Emotiva T1+ speakers about a month old. I have gone through two tweeters, they are physically burning up, discoloring the tweeter, temp reached 150 degrees with a heat gun measurement. Customer service has been great, but pinpointing the problem is the issue. The first time the speakers were being powered by the Emotiva XPA 3 channel amp, The tweeter got red hot at a comfortable loud level. The tweeter was replaced and the same thing happened again, I then unhooked the amp and just used my AVR for power, a Denon 4500X, again the tweeter heated up to over 140 degrees before I shut everything down. I need somebody smarter than me to offer their opinion.

Well, what's the newest info?

Clearly there is something terribly wrong here. If you think it is the speakers, Emo still has their 30 day no hassle return policy, are you still within the 30 days? Unfortunately, you still have to pay to ship them back under that policy, so if it is terribly defective, I would be trying to avoid that too.

 

[Benni777]

Sooooo, what happened with these speakers? Would like to know if returned, fixed or what? It would be intriguing to see if Danny at GR-Research could build a better x-over for these and perhaps correct the problem.. That said it would be dumb to buy new speakers to have them fixed.

 

[nathan_h]

OP has not been back to this site since feb 1.

 

[slipperybidness]

OP has not been back to this site since feb 1.

Maybe they burned down his house!????

 

[nathan_h]

Ouch!

Hopefully it means things were sorted with Emotiva and he's in a better place.....musically speaking. Sometimes, no news is good news.

Still, one does wonder. This was a head scratcher.

Obviously not a widespread problem otherwise we'd hear about it more. (Heck I have a pair of their monitors and I've run them hard at times with no apparent ill effect.)

The fact that BOTH speakers had this problem, and with more than one power source, does lend a little credence to using things beyond their limit......or maybe that there was damage one time, and that defect then impacted all future use regardless of what amplification was used.

But we never saw a true SPL measurement, so who knows?

 

[slipperybidness]

Ouch!

Hopefully it means things were sorted with Emotiva and he's in a better place.....musically speaking. Sometimes, no news is good news.

Still, one does wonder. This was a head scratcher.

Obviously not a widespread problem otherwise we'd hear about it more. (Heck I have a pair of their monitors and I've run them hard at times with no apparent ill effect.)

The fact that BOTH speakers had this problem, and with more than one power source, does lend a little credence to using things beyond their limit......or maybe that there was damage one time, and that defect then impacted all future use regardless of what amplification was used.

But we never saw a true SPL measurement, so who knows?

I have a set of the (discontinued) slim-line bookshelf speakers, got them on closeout for ~$160. I thought they may make good surrounds, I listened to them briefly and boxed them up.

I also have a USP-1, it is a GREAT preamp.

And, an XDA-1 DAC. That one, they did a poor job implementing the volume control, where anything <100% volume actually "discards bits". But, I knew that when I purchased it new at a steep discount, and if you have a preamp, then it is inconsequential. And, even when I did use the volume on it, I never could pick out degrade audio. But, that was why they finally came clean on it and discontinued it, and fixed it with the XDA-2.

What concerns me the most with EMO is there silly short product life cycles.

 

[ryanosaur]

What concerns me the most with EMO is there silly short product life cycles.

This I whole-heartedly agree with!
That, the immature design and development of some of their products. The longer-term unfulfilled promises of more of their products, the lack of support after they kill a product...
This tweeter thing just adds another coal to the fire.

 

[slipperybidness]

This I whole-heartedly agree with!
That, the immature design and development of some of their products. The longer-term unfulfilled promises of more of their products, the lack of support after they kill a product...
This tweeter thing just adds another coal to the fire.

Agreed, and yeah I had forgotten about some of those items you mentioned.

But, now I remember another one. Do you remember when they "brought in Bob Carver", and he was supposed to be designed Emo Tube amps. That didn't last long, and the tube amps never materialized either.

The odd thing to me is that they clearly CAN and HAVE made a good product for a good price! But they seem to have more misses than hits. Even just taking a step back and getting a new focus on core products would likely go a long way to rebuilding the brand.

Like I say, my USP-1 is great!!! I had bought it several years back as a stop-gap because I got tired of waiting for their XSP-1. But, by the time th XSP released, I had determined that the USP had done a fine job for me and no need to upgrade it.