Damaged speakers? How do I know?

Have you ever accidentally dimed your amp or had some other kind of mishap, giving you cause to fear for your speakers' safety? Have no fear. More than likely, nothing at all happened. On this episode of Ask The Expert we've got some tips to help you verify that your speakers are indeed OK.

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I accidentally set the volume of my Hegel H390 to 85 for 30 seconds. Could I have damaged the driver? I smelled a faint smell of varnish in the air.

This is a really good question, and to answer simply "maybe." However, usually if a speaker is damaged, you will be no doubt. We'll explain why now.

Usually, if something permanent has happened to your speaker, you will hear scraping or rattling, or something similar, inside the speaker. If everything still sounds right, most likely all you did was cause a little bit of the laquer on the voice coil to evaporate, without having caused any permanent damage. Out of interest, we actually have a separate episode about boiling voice coils here.

Again: if there is permanent damage, it's usually quite clear that something is wrong. If you are still worried, however, what you could do is to try running a sweep tone, and that might make it easier to hear if there is scraping or if something sounds weird. If you really want to be advanced, then there are tools that allow you to measure the impedance response of the speakers, which will give you a very clear answer on whether everything is as it should be.

But this is an extra requirement, and requires a little extra know-how. We have a separate episode about impedance in loudspeakers here, should that interest you.

If you're not inclined to spend a few hundred euros in order to figure out whether you've damaged your speakers or not, then you hopefully can take comfort in the knowledge that – if everything sounds the way it should – more than likely, nothing is wrong with your speakers.

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