Loud Popping noises coming from speakers...

[ratm]

I put in Dark Knight rises and wanted to try it out at Reference level since I'm home alone for a few. Here is my set up.

PS3 for my bluray player
Yamaha rx-v765
XPA-3
HTD level 3 bookshelfs for L&R and Level 3 CC
Epik Empire

So I pop in the movie and during the opening hijack scene, I cranked it up to -10 as anything louder kinda scared me. At several points, I heard loud popping noises what seemed to come from my R & L. So then I turned it down and then tried it again, and again, loud popping noises. Less than -15 or so and it goes away. Any ideas?

 

[ratm]

Anyone???????

 

[cpp]

Do you have your speakers set to large or small in your receiver setup ?

 

[ridikas]

Dark Knight Rises is the obvious culprit. Even the speakers refuse to play that pseudo intellectual, hipster, pretentious garbage

 

[Grador]

Do you have your speakers set to large or small in your receiver setup ?

If cpp and I are thinking the same thing, you were reaching the maximum excursion limit for the woofers on the LR. If your speakers are set to large you were probably hitting them with enough bass energy such that the woofers were trying to travel further than they were physically able, making a popping sound as they hit their limit. Don't do that...

 

[ParadigmDawg]

Your speakers have a low Frequency Response of 47 Hz. As mentioned above, make sure they are not set to "large".

If they are set to "small" what is your x-over set at? I would try raising it 20 hz higher and try it again.

How big is your room? I have a giant room and I blew a few bookshelve speakers at reference level. I ultimately had to change to towers

When I had a JL-F13 sub, that movie would bottom it out big time, the SVS Ultra handles it just fine.

 

[cpp]

If cpp and I are thinking the same thing, you were reaching the maximum excursion limit for the woofers on the LR. If your speakers are set to large you were probably hitting them with enough bass energy such that the woofers were trying to travel further than they were physically able, making a popping sound as they hit their limit. Don't do that...

Same thing Grador. Thanks for explaining it.

 

[ratm]

Your speakers have a low Frequency Response of 47 Hz. As mentioned above, make sure they are not set to "large".

If they are set to "small" what is your x-over set at? I would try raising it 20 hz higher and try it again.

How big is your room? I have a giant room and I blew a few bookshelve speakers at reference level. I ultimately had to change to towers

When I had a JL-F13 sub, that movie would bottom it out big time, the SVS Ultra handles it just fine.

Forgive my total brain fart. But do you mean raise the crossover on my AVR? Or raise the crossover on my empire?

 

[TLS Guy]

Forgive my total brain fart. But do you mean raise the crossover on my AVR? Or raise the crossover on my empire?

According to the manual for those speakers, the receiver crossover for those speakers has to be set to 80 or 100 Hz.

I really doubt those speakers will play at the level you are trying to make them play. Even at 350 to 400 HZ there will still be significant cone excursion.

Small high powered speakers like the ATC SCM 7 are expensive, $1000 per pair. At you price point a 6.5 inch driver is not going to achieve those sort of power levels without destruction. I bet those speakers only handle 120 watts for a nano second.

 

[ratm]

Thanks for all the responses guys. I changed the crossover to 100hz from 80. That was the first (and probably) last time I tried to play it that loud. Looks like from now on, Im not going louder than 15-10 or so. At 11 feet, -15 is plenty loud for me.

 

[ahblaza]

Forgive my total brain fart. But do you mean raise the crossover on my AVR? Or raise the crossover on my empire?

Raise the xover of the front three speakers to 80-100Hz and let the empire handle the lower frequencies below the 80-100Hz, and as TLS said check the power handling of your speakers, you don't want to fry those drivers.

 

[ratm]

Here are the specs for the current bookshelfs that I have:


Max. Power Handling: 120 watts
Frequency Response: 47 Hz - 40 kHz
Impedance: 8 ohms
Sensitivity: 88dB
Voice Coil: 1.5"
Shielded Magnet: woofer: 21 + 10 OZ; tweeter: .7 OZ neodymium
Crossover: 3rd order at 2500Hz
Speaker connections: Dual gold-plated binding posts for regular one-cable connection or optional bi-wire/bi-amp connection using bi-wire speaker cable
Dimensions (HxWxD): 15.75" x 8.675" x 11.5"
Weight (per piece): 19 lbs

And here is the HTD tower speakers that I "could" get:


Max. Power Handling: 200 watts
Frequency Response: 30 Hz - 40 kHz
Impedance: 8 ohms
Sensitivity: 89dB
Voice Coil: 2" on mid-range dome; 2.5" on low-range woofers
Shielded Magnet: woofer: 23 + 10 OZ; mid-range dome: 4 OZ neodymium; tweeter: .7 OZ neodymium
Crossover: 3rd order at 725 Hz and 2.5 kHz
Dimensions (HxWxD without base): 41.5" x 8.625" x 11.5"
Dimension of Base (HxWxD): 1" x 10.75" x 12.75"
Weight (per piece): 51 lbs

 

[herbu]

Once again, you guys are the best. I did a significant system upgrade, largely based on info from this forum. It sounds AMAZING!!! But, first loud Bing Bang Boom movie, (Lord of the Rings @ -10dB), I heard a couple loud POPS from front speakers. Stopped immediately, turned down the volume a bit, and it didn't happen again. Volume back up, another POP during particularly big boom sequence.

Searched this forum and found this thread. Checked my own stuff based on info in the thread. Audyssey set crossover for Aperion Grand Towers at 40Hz. Aperion specs say freq response starts at 47Hz, so I changed my crossover to 60Hz. Called Aperion and the guy recommended setting crossover at 80Hz... so I changed it to 80. Will try the rest of the movie like that and see if POPs go away.

BTW, system is: Denon AVR-X4000, Emotiva XPA-5 Amp, Rythmik FV15HP Subwoofer, 4x Grand Towers and Grand Center, KEF rear surrounds and KEF Sub #2. Learned about Denon/Emotiva/Rythmik/Aperion from this forum and Audioholics site. I gotta say, you guys put together quite a nice system for me, and continue to school me about how to use it and answer various questions. Thanks!!!

 

[ahblaza]

Experiment with the 60Hz xover and see what you think, then try crossing them at 80 and let that FV15 show it's stuff, I think you may prefer the 80 for movies and 60 for music.

 

[herbu]

OK. Started movie w/ crossover set at 80. Still got loud POP/CRACK from fronts. Changed crossover to 90. Still got it. Then changed Speaker Config to SMALL. Checked crossover and my system apparantly sets "small" to 100Hz. Finished movie w/ no more POPs.

Regardless of what system will handle, it seems -10db is wife & my limit for LOUD Bing/Bang/Boom movie. And it seems setting mains to SMALL fixes my POP problem and may be the easiest adjustment to make, then unmake after the movie.

Question: Does setting speaker config to "small" do anything other than change the crossover?

Thanks!

 

[ahblaza]

Regardless of your speakers unless they are full range capable of handling the lower FR they should be set to small, let your mains handle what they are rated for and let the sub do the rest, changing them to small should not affect the xover, you can still select at what you want them to be crossed over to the sub