Driver Dropouts????????

I have had this problem before and it has become more frequent recently.

Can drivers suddenly drop in output for a few seconds and suddenly come back to normal SPL?

My dilema is that I have two possibly three different drivers doing this 1 x Eminance Kappa 15LF, 1 x Eminence Omega 18 and 1 x PDN12MH25 with this problem?

I normally use 2 x Kappa's in cubo's and 4 x PDN's in SMT's and occasionally use the Omega's in my 186's they are fed from Matrix amps which, I have 5 and I have swapped amps etc. My mixer is a berry too. I have two berry EQ's a FBQ6200 and a new DEQ and I have 2 berry xovers which, I have tried both at different times but, still get this dropout?

I run my system in mono and it is very difficult to pin down what is causing the dropouts. I have changed all the leads and rechecked connections on the drivers, measured the resistance of them and they all fall inside their tolerances, I have checked the drivers for cone sag and any other damage and can't find anything wrong.

This fault occurs when I am performing and I noticed it happening more often these days I think I have managed to find out which of the drivers are dropping out. I will need to mark them.

Can anyone throw some light on this? I am guessing that the drivers are braking down under load?

Thanks,

it could be a mixer issue.......... or a faulty connection in one of you leads.......... you would need to check all leads then remove one item of gear from the chain at a time, to see which one is playing up....... i would guess that it is not a driver issue if you have a few drivers droping out. you say you are running in mono, are the amps bridged...... if not is it on the left side or right side of setup......

edit sorry you have checked leads........

is your limiters set up correctly........

Thanks Bee, Yes I am using the limiters on the amps etc. I have never clipped any of the channels.

I don't use the 186's at the same time as the Cubo's and I think that the PDN has a fault as one of the original two PD drivers I bought in 2009 did cut out mysteriously the first time I used it in a MT120 cab. when I used the PDN again a week later it seemed ok so I thought it was a bad conncetion. I did report it to PD and they said to let them know if it happened again.

Because this is intermittent I can't tell if it happens to the cabs that are in the first connection to the amps or the second.

Luckily, I used the 186's and my other pair of SMT's which, I had loaned to a friend, last night and the dropouts only occured on one 186 cab. I was driving them through a matrix 3000h with the input switch in mono and it was the cab on channel B that seemed to be dropping out?

Is it possible for the insulation of the windings to breakdown under load and cause this fault? I thought that if a driver had a fault like this the amps would possibly shut down, E.G. higher or lower resitance?

Thanks smiley20

COZY PILLOW wrote: Is it possible for the insulation of the windings to breakdown under load and cause this fault? I thought that if a driver had a fault like this the amps would possibly shut down, E.G. higher or lower resitance?

possible, my thinking is if it was the mixer then the hole of 1 side would drop out, so not this, prob not an amp issue as you said you have swapped amps around, its not the x over as you have allso swapped this over..... it wont be the FBQ6200 as again the hole of one side would drop out, this narrows it down to cable or speaker...... or is it possible that the fbq6200 has a fault and is droping out in that frequency range........

Hi Bee, Thanks for the reply. Yes I did it may have been the FBQ6200 too but I bought a DEQ1024 EQ a few weeks back and it still does it with that too.

This is why I thought it was individual drivers and as I said I found that one of the Omega's was definitely a problem on Saturday and one of the Kappa's and a PDN was dropping out on Friday. It is very difficult to pinpoint as I work Solo and the general public wouldn't know any difference.

i think I am going to have to bring along someone with some knowledge to let them listen and see what they think?

cheers,