Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Is my Sub Blown ?!

This is not directly related to my Axioms, but is of course a part of the whole package.

I have a complete Axiom package minus the SubWoofer. I got myself an SVS-20-39-PCPlus. I watched Return of the King last night. There was a scene where a Ring Wraith landed on the wall in front of Ghandalf during the battle. The bass from the winged beast was unreal. Unfortunately I heard a VERY loud pop from the subwoofer. My sub had never put out levels like this before and I may have had it turned up too high. Is there any way for me to test how much I may have damaged my sub?

Also, the friend that was demoing my system with me said something about the settings being wrong. He mentioned the volume had to be turned up very loud to hear the bass. I had the Gain at 80% max and the receiver volume at -12. Any idea what setting i may need to check on the receiver to correct this?

Hi TrueFX,

Did your friend mean the "volume" on the Receiver or the volume on the subwoofer? Do you mean the sub's gain control was at 80%? I assume that's what you meant.

I'd lower the subwoofer's volume control to about 60% of its rotation range--halfway plus a bit. Then set your AV receiver's subwoofer output level (in the AV receiver menu) to about 0 dB or a bit less--or a few dB more if you can't get enough sub output with your AV receiver volume at your usual setting.

You can check the subwoofer playback with some music CDs, preferably some with well-recorded acoustic or electric bass solos. Listen to the deep bass sounds for any mechanical scraping or scratchy sounds. That may be a warped or damaged voice-coil former that banged against the magnet structure when you heard the loud "pop" and that is now scraping against the magnet's pole piece. Some drivers have the former constructed in such a way that "bottoming" the woofer won't damage it, but it will make a nasty sound when it happens. With others, you'd have to replace the woofer if you hear mechanical scratching, buzzing or scraping sounds.

If you don't hear any of those nasty sounds with electric or acoustic bass music, then your woofer isn't damaged.

I hope your sub's woofer isn't damaged. In any case, a woofer exchange shouldn't be too costly.

Ah, you've got a Denon and you used the autocalibration.

Yeah.

OK, what Alan said. You should never have the sub at -12; it probably doesn't get enough signal to turn on.