by Is your Subwoofer Not Working? What are the reasons behind it? Do you want to know how to test a subwoofer if it is blown or not?
Subwoofers are the bass of a sound speaker along with low pitched Audio frequency.
As it’s a low pitched Audio speaker that emanates low bass frequencies, It plays a vital role in creating complete music when you are enjoying music.
Listening to music is the most pleasant thing ever. There might be a few people who don’t love to listen to music. Whatever during listing music if your Audio system disturbs you, go and check maybe the subwoofer is not working.
Maybe this error is happening due to voice call damage or something happened with the speaker cone. As a result, your speaker subwoofer sounds blown. But don’t worry, we are here to suggest how to be sure if your speaker is working well or not?
Reasons Why Subwoofer Not Working?
Before sorting a problem, we need to know how the problem may occur. A subwoofer is called the base of a sound system. It’s created with the lowest sound frequency. It’s able to cover rangers around 20 hertz to 200 hertz.
Subwoofers have cones that range starting 8 inches to 21 inches. Subwoofers used to move a lot of air to reproduce these low frequencies. This sound reproduction helps feel the sound. Whatever, let’s know the reasons why subwoofers stop working.
1. Cone Seal Failure
All kinds of woofers, including subwoofers, need to move air with its comfort frequency, or it’s not going to work ultimately. They are created with low, mid-range frequency to provide a sound that you can feel.
So a Subwoofer does this process by pushing and pulling air inside, using the cone back and ahead. Whatever the cone is sealed with various Materials which cover the stone.
If the seal is broken or leaks, it moves inside but can’t control the air as needed. It happens because when the seal gets damaged, the air doesn’t get the actual space as it needs.
Moreover, the resistance of this speaker is not going to provide the correct resistance just because of this cone Seal Failure. This commands the speaker to move too much and too fast. As a result, sometimes collisions with several parts of the system.
2. Driver Magnet Failure
All kinds of woofers, even subwoofers, also consist of a cone attached to a permanent magnet, whatever it’s not an electromagnet.
The magnet is situated at the bottom of the cone and attached near a coil wire. That coil wire may work as an electromagnet.
If voltage and current providing source provide signals to the electromagnet, then the electromagnet works as an informer. Thus the electromagnet attracts the permanent magnet. Whatever driving the cone produces sounds.
Additionally, if the permanent magnet somehow gets broken, the magnet poles are going to change, which are making a connection with the electromagnet. This will make the subwoofer unable to reproduce the Sound with perfection.
3. Short Circuit
A short circuit mainly hampers anything related to electronic issues. Nowadays, the most common reason that subwoofers are not working is a short circuit.
If a short circuit occurs at the terminals of the subwoofer, it will cause problems in reaching the electrical current and signal from the subwoofer.
Lastly, the short circuit in the coil will indeed reduce the electromagnets power-producing amount, even if it may not leave the needed power to drive a cone.
4. Lack Of Power
Just think about yourself first if your one hand is broken, but you are in a mess with some friends, you become aggressive and try to beat them, but you fail. That happened before your other hand was not working.
So if the electromagnetic coil in the subwoofer doesn’t get at least an amount of amperage, it can’t provide enough strength to interact entirely with the permanent magnet.
5. Subwoofer Testing
If you are suspecting that your subwoofer is not working, then you need to fix it. Before fixing anything at first, you have to check the actual problem.
So if you want to find out why the subwoofer is not working, you need some tests that will get results that are the real problem. Later, you may fix it. Testing methods are given below:
6. Test With Multimeter
A piece of wire is known as a voice coil. Here we are talking about the coil which attaches to the speaker cone and provides current in the speaker.
Through this current, the speaker runs. It has two terminals, the first one positive and the other one negative. To test for a blown coil, you may use a multimeter. Multimeter tests the voltage, resistance and even current.
To test the turn off of your speaker and remove the positive and negative terminals. For both of the terminals, you need to connect with both circuits of the multimeter.
This multimeter will help you to determine if there’s any electrical resistance to the coil circuit. Electrical circuits measure the resistance as ohms.
- Turn off speaker
- Remove positive and negative terminals.
- Connect both of the clamps with the terminals.
- Check the ohms.
- If the reading is above 1.0 ohms, then coils are not blown.
- If the readings are below 1.0 ohms, then coils are blown.
Whatever you may check with some other tricks if the coils are blown that are given below:
Sometimes when the voice coil and the subwoofer cone becomes detached, half or adequately, the subwoofer may sound higher because of this miscommunication. The amplifier may not be in control.
Now If You Want To Determine To Follow The Tricks.
Tricks 1
Try to listen to the speakers carefully. If the speaker is blown, it will sound distinctly distorted, and the audio is going to be off.
Tricks 2
If there is no sound coming from the speaker, make sure that everything is okay and hooked up successfully. Because If a speaker is blown, it’s not going to sound or too distorted.
Tricks 3
Now it’s time to pull off the grill. You have to feel the woofers as woofers are created with the lowest frequencies which help to pump air inside the woofer. Feel the woofer; if it’s pumping, then the speaker is not blown.
That’s all you may apply to check if the speaker is blown or not.
Test The Cone
To test the subwoofer cone, you need to
Cover off and uncover the cone. Next, slowly push it on the opposite side of the cone to check if the cone is moving or remains solid. Now you might be thinking about why it’s needed to move the cone because it’s created with a suspension system that allows it to move.
If you observe that the cone is not moving ultimately, then you have to understand that something wrong is happening with your subwoofer.
Test The Sound
The best way to test a Subwoofer with its sound quality which is produced by the speakers. All you need to do is :
- Turn on the sound system.
- Be sure that the volume is low.
- If you feel that there is sound, but it’s distorted, then you have to understand that your subwoofer is a little blown.
- But if you ultimately can’t hear any sound or suddenly the volume becomes higher, then become sure that your subwoofer is fully blown.
There are some other ways you may try to test a subwoofer.
Testing With An Audio Track
Some peoples use room analyzer to analyze that how deep the subwoofer works. But if you don’t have a room analyzer, you don’t need to worry.
Use an audio track and check the hertz. But remember most unexceptional subwoofers start to fade around 30-40 hertz. So don’t go under 30 hertz and don’t run this performance so higher. Or you may have to face cuffing, rattles or other undesirable noises.
Testing With Kick Drum
You may test your subwoofer with analog kick Drum. Play some kick Drum files, in two-way testing conditions,
The first one with your main speaker only,
The next one is turning on your subwoofer.
If you are successful in setting up the system correctly, then the level of the kick drums will stay the same.
The kick will offer different types of depth. Thus you hear a difference. But keep it in your mind that all you hear the difference between the frequency range, not in the loudness.
Conclusion
Subwoofers are the central part of a speaker if it doesn’t work correctly, you have to fix it by yourself or a professional. If it’s not possible to fix it, then you have to get a new one.
But remember all you need to do first is to check the where is the actual problem that why your Subwoofer Not Working.
Without finding the actual problem, you sort out it correctly. So try the testing methods we mentioned above. If you feel that the testing methods are working, then please let us know in the comments below.
Moreover, if you faced the same situation and how did you test your subwoofer, you may let us know that might help others.
Hopefully, our testing methods will work. All the best, and keep trying until you are tired.
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