Car Stereos: 6.5 Component speakers popping while playing, pioneer speakers, factory speakers

Question
Hello Justin,

I recently purchased a set of Pioneer component speakers, model TS-A1604C, for my 2004 Honda Accord. I have had these speakers installed for a good half year, and I am extremely satisfied with their sound reproduction capacity in comparison to the factory speakers.

Unfortunately, the speakers have began to produce some sort of a problem within the past few days. When the music is playing, both the tweeter and the midrange speaker begins to pop whenever the low frequency-or bass- hits, or gets high. The popping is very loud, and only happens after the speakers are playing for a few minutes. At first it was not very bad: they were able to play music normally for a while before this happens. I thought to myself, maybe I am overheating the speakers or playing music too loud. But after time goes by, the symptoms come on quicker and now I am almost unable to play any music on them without them beginning to pop.

I have no idea what is causing the problem, but I do have a few theories:

-perhaps the speakers are damaged from a certain event where the music is played way too loudly and i will have to purchase replacements
-due to the fact that these speakers do not come with crossovers, perhaps the low frequencies are hurting the speakers due to the fact that they are meant for woofers (but I do not know too much about crossovers and if tweeters can actually handle bass)
-perhaps the wiring connecting the speakers to the headunit are melting or corroding. These wires came with the Pioneer speakers
-perhaps the headunit is failing. it is the factory headunit and it plays music to the rear 6x9 speakers completely fine, and they too, are Pioneer aftermarket speakers

I have contacted Pioneer and am awaiting for their reply, but I want to make sure I find out what the problem is before investing money in a new set of speakers.

Thank you!
Brian

Answer
Hi Brian,

The bad news is you're probably dealing with dead speakers.  Hitting the end of their frequency range extends the voicecoil the farthest, and might suggest that something is losing its connectivity.  You might be able to test this by hooking up a multimeter to the two leads and pushing the speaker to the end of its coil.  See if the impedance changes.

Another simple test (obviously) is to plug another speaker in and see if it does the same thing.  But in this situation, I'd suspect the speakers have died.k

The most likely way to prevent future speakers from dying is to use a crossover, resistor, or the deck's built in equaliser (if it has one) to make sure the speakers aren't trying to reproduce frequencies they can't safely hit.

Justin