Woofer What To Do?

[Rab]

I have a conundrum. after years of living in an apartment with a growing Hi-Fi and a limit on volume I have finally got myself a detached house to let my Hi-Fi sing. since my amps grew to increase sound quality my speakers never grew to accommodate volume due to apartment life. it didn't take long before I blew my humble B&W DM601s2's. The woofer has gone in one channel. looking around on line I found a few options to replace the woofer, I left some bids on and I got a new replacement driver. I forgot about the other bids and I now have another pair of DM601 S2 speakers (minus the tweeters). my thinking is....can I hook up the second set of speakers in parallel with the first set? are there any merits to this? will this reduce the load on each individual woofer? will I get a better sound quality? or will i have half the volume in the woofers with the same sound quality, while the hi freq has a normal load? I could amplify each driver, 50w to hi, 100w to mid1, 100w to mid2. Would a diy xover let me take better advantage of this situation? or should I just keep the volume low and save up and buy a proper set of screamers?

I now have:
x2 DM601 S2 (full working order, cabinet, xover, all drivers)
x2 DM602 S2 (tweeters removed, only cabinet, xover + woofers)
x1 pre amp (musical fidelity xp100)
x2 power amps (musical fidelity xas100, dual mono)
x2 power amps (musical fidelity xa50 mono amps)- not in use but optional

what to do? all comments/advice/suggestions welcome.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

"my amps grew to increase sound quality " - wrong on many levels
Adding way to much power is recipe for disaster as you have proven

without knowing your budget - My suggestion to you would be quite generic - is to get new speakers which can take the beating - aka play at very loud volumes for continuing periods of time
aka Pro or Pro-Like speakers...

 

[Rab]

thanks for the response, Ultimately I know I need new speakers. I had spare cash in the past and spent it on amps, I knew my speakers were by far the weakest link but didn't want to buy full range speakers that go loud as my neighbour would complain and equally did not want expensive high quality small speakers as the move to a house has always been on the horizon.

I wondered if there was something i could do in the interim with the bits I have, mess around diy thing until i fork out for something more appropriate. or is it a waste of time?

 

[markw]

my take? Use those "other" speakers as doners and make one good pair of 601's. Then, add a subwoofer. A good subwoofer can serve you through several system upgrades.

Here's a review that says basically what I said in my second sentence.

If that's not "loud" enough then new, high efficency, high power handling, speakers are in order. The 601's will only play so loud and are "only" speced for a max of 100 watts undistorted.

 

[Rab]

Hi Mark, Thanks for the response and the suggestions.

My original intention was to source a replacement driver, by mistake i ended up with 3 drivers! I wondered if I could put something together to utilize this situation.

I was thinking new cabinet to incorporate the extra drivers/new xover or something, more of a DIY/mod thing really, probably posted on the wrong forum.

at least i have plenty of spares now to last up to the full range speakers in a year or so.

 

[Grador]

I also see that you currently have 100 watts of amp per channel. Given that the speakers are rated for about that much power, it's likely that in your desire for more volume you were playing the amp past it's capabilities. Be cautious and listen for distortion as you increase the volume, distortion kills.