can you diagnose this woofer prob???

[trulfe]

i bought a comp from dell and every so often the woofer starts making a constant farting noise and not hitting the bass sounds. I sent one pair of speakers back to dell thinking it was a defective set of speakers, but the new pair is doing the same thing. It only happens if i turn it up past a certain volume, but its still not very loud. Could it be my sound card or any other suggestions. Thanks y'all in advance, the dell tech support was stupid and had me doing unhelpful things for over an hour with no help.

 

[glen]

driver is bottoming out

 

[trulfe]

any suggestions on what to do? i just bought the computer 3 months ago 1.3ghz with SB live card and i dont really want to send in my whole comp.

 

[glen]

Not play it as loud.

 

[trulfe]

is that my only option? i would like to play it louder at times, its not played excessively loud when this happens and the two speakers are fine, its just the woofer that goes crazy.

 

[xchangx]

basically, you're trying to get more bass out of the sub than it can handle. There's nothing you can do about it. (get a new one)

 

[trulfe]

but the funny thing is that is only does it on occasion. it works fine at loud volumes most of the time, and then it all the sudden starts having problems producing bass, and just makes a clicking noise instead of a bass sound. sometimes what helps is if i unplug it from the back of the comp and let it sit for a while then it works good for a while.

 

[Nefrodite]

you forgot to mention what kind of speakers they are doesn't dell have klipsch optional?

 

[trulfe]

i have altec lansing acs340 speakers






btw- i always give people with user rating on 10's for input

 

[d33pt]

either the driving is bottoming out or the amp is clipping and going into protection (shutting down) or both...

 

[Platypus]

Try turning the "bass" knob on the actual woofer down.

 

[trulfe]

turning the bass knob down doesnt help at all. its all relevant to volume settings, and doesnt have this problem all the time. i can hear it creeping up usually and it gradually gets worse until it is fully blown then later it will work fine.

 

[Nefrodite]

altecs? iew, i think your pushing it too hard. i think if you read the manual it'll tell you what will happen if you overdrive em.

 

[Beau]

This sometimes happens, too, when the woofer is creating excess heat. It causes the linear coils to expand and create noise. But most likely this is just the speaker clipping from excess power (watts) and not enough voltage to the coils to keep the cone movement under control at loud volums.... as the other have said: get another woofer. Try to get one with a built in amp matched to the woofer, preferrabley if you can find one with at least 6v output to the speaker. Polk speakers are great!

 

[trulfe]

So do you guys believe that there is nothing wrong with my cpu that its just the speakers (or just the woofer for that matter) that can't handle it?? Since this is my second set that i got from them and it is still making the noise, i thought it was due to an internal cpu problem or soundcard or something, but im not really good at fixing or diagnosing cpu problems at all.